20 100 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 Stoyanoff writes: "In Book V of John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Genius's extended discussion of Covetousness demonstrates how this subtype of Avarice leads to the ruin of the networks of collectives that make up society. Interestingly, the process by which Covetousness damages the collectives that make up these networks looks a lot like the neoliberalism that has come to dominate a number of governments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Gower's tales trace the spread of this sin from the top of society to the bottom; from the highly public to the intimately personal. In all scenarios, Covetousness is a force of destruction rather than one of good, altering and, in the end, ultimately destroying the social bonds that once existed between the actors involved. Using Actor-Network Theory, I argue that Gower presents his readers with the dire consequences of misunderstanding the structure of and collectives in society when Covetousness governs one's actions--when the market overtakes the moral. The negative effects of Covetousness in the tales within this section of Book 5 reveal the dependence of each perpetrator of Covetousness on a collective of actors that includes material objects rather than monolithic social structures. Furthermore, Gower's critique of Covetousness in showing us its dissolution of the bonds and relationships that make up society both foreshadows the rise and lasting negative impact of neoliberalism." [Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stoyanoff, Jeffrey G. Published Stoyanoff, Jeffery G. "Covetousness in Book V of Confessio Amantis: A Medieval Precursor to Neoliberalism." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 4 (2018). Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/accessus/vol4/iss1/2 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 Covetousness in Book V of "Confessio Amantis": A Medieval Precursor to Neoliberalism. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Watson notes that "examples of counseling women . . . abound in the Confessio Amantis" and that "it should not surprise us that a number of powerful women owned copies of Gower's poem" (160). One of these (as Kate D. Harris discovered in 1993) was Jacquetta of Luxembourg, widow of John, Duke of Bedford, wife of Richard Woodville, and mother-in-law to Edward IV. Harris pointed to Jacquetta's signature and motto three times inscribed in the margins (see plates in Watson at 163-64) as evidence that she owned, and apparently read at least in part, Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 307. Watson speculates on when and why Jacquetta inscribed the manuscript. A signature at the foot of a column on fol. 141r that includes a dramatic shift of fortune suggests to Watson the fall of the Lancastrians and the rise of the Yorkists, and prompts her to muse: "It may have been at this moment of uncertainty that Jacquetta marked [this] passage in the Confessio Amantis" (165).] [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Watson, Sarah Wilma. Published Watson, Sarah Wilma. "Another Woman Reader of John Gower's Confessio Amantis: Jacquetta of Luxembourg and Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 307." Journal of the Early Book Society 21 (2018): 159-70. ISSN 1525-6790 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 Another Woman Reader of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis": Jacquetta of Luxembourg and Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 307. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The complex twelve-line stanza form or strophe of Mirour de l'Omme (aabaabbbabba) is acknowledged to be modeled on that of Hélinand de Froidmont's "Vers de al Mort," a poem to which Gower refers and quotes briefly in MO. Breaking new ground, Yeager argues that the poem is one Gower knew well, "in full, not in excerpt" (132), probably from a yet-to-be-discovered manuscript of Cistercian origin. According to Yeager, Gower's very choice to write MO in French, despite the official discouragement of French in the Statute of Pleading, had much to do with the "Mort," since the poem and its verse form "retained synonymity" in late fourteenth-century England with the "moral urgency of repentance and redirection of living" (133), a synonymity established by Yeager's commentary on the two other "known English examples" (121) of excerpts from the "Mort"--Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby MS 86 and Maidstone (Kent) Museum MS A.1. However, Yeager argues, Gower "pushes far past" (121) these other two examples, using Hélinand's poem as his "guiding principle" (122) in formulating MO, exploring and developing shared themes and techniques, particularly Holy Fear and the rhetorical dimensions of strophe clustering, direct speech, and indirect speech. Yeager acknowledges as a matter of course the vital importance of other source material in MO, especially Frère Laurent's "Somme le Roi," but he demonstrates that Gower adopted and adapted the "distinctive, arresting poetic 'voice'" (126) of Hélinand's poem and its powerful strophe in creating his own French masterpiece. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, Robert F. Published Yeager, Robert F. "The 'Strophe d'Hélinand' and John Gower." Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes / Journal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies 36, no 2 (2018): 115-33. ISSN: 2115-6360 Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) 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 The "Strophe d'Hélinand" and John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Allen-Goss, Lucy. Published Allen-Goss, Lucy. "Queerly Productive: Women and Collaboration in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 1. 6." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 9 (2018), 334-48. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review Allen-Goss, focusing primarily on the fragmentary "Tale of Tereus" in the Findern manuscript, argues, "female queer desire is potentially hyper-productive, with each female body simultaneously an inscribable surface and a prosthetic pen/penis that can inscribe" (334). The Findern manuscript's compilational strategies "privilege a distinctly queer mode of female textual practice," Allen-Goss claims, and she identifies the placement of the names Elizabeth Cotton and Elizabeth Francis as a memorial to "female-female collaboration" within this manuscript (335). Allen-Goss uses Anna Klosowska's "Queer Love in the Middle Ages" to inform her queer reading of female collaboration on the feminized page as well as work by Anne Laskaya that posits the potential of "female interactions with books in terms of queer erotics" (336). Allen-Goss suggests that women writing is a form of "pleasuring" the female page (337). The competing hands of men are just that--competing--while women's competing hands suggest female queer desire. Allen-Goss focuses on the story of Philomena in Gower's CA in the Findern manuscript that is "widely marked by textual recombinations, excisions, and reassemblies . . . as being particularly typical of women's manuscript culture" (338). In Findern, the "Tale of Tereus" begins when Tereus realizes he has just eaten Itys, and Allen-Goss calls Philomena's speech after she has been violated by Tereus "penetrative." Because this tale is removed from the prologue of the CA in Findern, Allen-Goss suggests, "Philomena is placed at the origin point of a new and female tradition of textual interpretation, her words mediated through female authorities" (341). The omissions in this manuscript version create a female-centric experience of this tale that excludes male authority. When considered in the context of the texts that follow Gower's in the Findern manuscript, especially Chaucer's "Parliament of Fowles," Philomena's song is for women, and, according to Allen-Goss, the "queer erotic" of this lyric is echoed in the female collaboration of the manuscript between Cotton and Francis (343-44).] [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Queerly Productive: Women and Collaboration in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 1. 6. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Hsy, Jonatahn. Published Hsy, Jonathan. "Linguistic Entrapment: Interlanguage, Bivernacularity, and Life across Tongues." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 9 (2018), 196-208. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Using the work of Alexandre Baril and José Esteban Muñoz, Hsy addresses how it feels "to be a multi-lingual author who is never 'at home' in any one language," specifically in the works of John Gower and Charles d'Orléans (196). Hsy begins by making the case for using contemporary theory to read medieval literature in order to consider "nonbinary social positioning" (196). Medieval multilingual authors' poetry demonstrates their experience of what Baril calls a "rhetoric of embodied entrapment" or "a feeling of 'wrong-bodness'" (198). To illustrate this argument, Hsy introduces a key term, "interlanguage," which he describes as "a phenomenon typically defined as the 'interference' of the system of rules of one language when using another language'" (198). Hsy discusses the effects of "interlanguage" on Gower's and d'Orléans's bivernacular poetry in relation to Anglophone and Francophone subjectivities. For Gower in particular, Hsy argues that we see "interlanguage" most clearly at work in his "intersex" personifications--that is, when Gower mixes grammatical and descriptive gender. In the "Mirour de l'Omme" in particular, Hsy identifies Gower's play with gender personifications as underscoring his attempt to make French more English. Hsy goes so far as to claim, "Gower puts French in 'English drag'" (201). Hsy clarifies, "Gower's 'franglais' offers a styled superimposing of features of L1 (the so-called 'natural gender' system in English) and L2 (a binary paradigm of grammatical gender in French), and his writing demonstrates both the artistic and the cognitive effects of language transfer" (202). Through such "translingual rhetorical craft," both Gower and d'Orléans trouble cultural binaries, creating "dynamically trans allegorical figures" (206). [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Linguistic Entrapment: Interlanguage, Bivernacularity, and Life across Tongues. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Magnani, Roberta, and Diane Watt. Published Magnani, Roberta, and Diane Watt. "On the Edge: Chaucer and Gower's Queer Glosses." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 9 (2018), 269-88. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Biography of Gower Review Magnani and Watt revisit the supposed rivalry between Gower and Chaucer, evidenced in the introduction to Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale" and Gower's "Tale of Canace and Machaire" and "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre," to focus on what reading these texts in conversation can tell us about the relationships between authority and interpretation. They argue, "Gower, Chaucer, and indeed some of their readers (as revealed through the Latin glossing of Gower's and Chaucer's vernacular texts) are acutely aware of the risks, and sometimes the pleasures, of misprision or queer (mis-) interpretation" (270). Magnani and Watt suggest that "masculine and patrilineal" are "inadequate interpretive frameworks" for discussing the deviant sexuality in Chaucer's and Gower's tales, due to "the presence of the queer" (271). They examine MS Fairfax 3 in particular, claiming that a "queer gap" exists between "what 'is not' said" and "what 'is' said" in the "Tale of Constance" (273; emphasis original). Magnani and Watt identify gender inconsistencies arising between the Middle English tale and the Latin gloss, such as the Latin personification "invidia" (feminine) and the examples of Envy in Middle English that include both men and women. These "queer gaps . . . punctuate a narrative very much concerned with ideals and distortions of masculinity and femininity, and with the fluidity, rather than fixity, of hermeneutics" (274). Magnani and Watt also demonstrate the differences between manuscripts to emphasize the "queer fissure" of female agency opened in MS Fairfax 3 (which includes glosses) as opposed to MS Bodley 902 (which does not include glosses), adding that these "queer fissures" allow polyvalent rather than fixed meanings for Constance's story (279). After discussing Chaucer's versions of this tale, Magnani and Watt conclude, "the queer disjunctions between the Latin glosses and the vernacular text indicate an unstable hermeneutics in which meaning is not constant" (285). [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On the Edge: Chaucer and Gower's Queer Glosses. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Urban advocates for renewed attention to how we edit Gower's "Confessio Amantis," suggesting that "queer editing" would permit the numerous extant manuscripts to exist simultaneously without privileging one over another: "'Confessio Amantis' and its manuscript corpus actively encourage the co-existence of heterogeneous voices and identities, a co-existence that in turn leads to an urge to reproduce the text in ways that allow for this heterogeneity to inform our encounters with the text" (304). To discuss how to accomplish such editing, Urban engages the concept of queer temporalities, particularly as espoused in the work of Elizabeth Freeman, Carolyn Dinshaw, and Jack Halberstam. Urban suggests that the different manuscripts of Gower's CA witness different temporal moments and that "Gower's poem 'itself' contains these kinds of time frame and temporal systems" (305; emphasis original). These queer temporalities present "the potential to produce unusual encounters with Gower's poem" (305). Urban posits that only when combined do all of the extant manuscripts of the CA create the whole poem (306). He nonetheless acknowledges that the majority of variances are isolated to the poem's prologue. Thus, Urban focuses on the frame narrative of the CA. Focusing on the gloss in the prologue of MS Ashmole 35, Urban explores what queer editing could mean for the CA--in particular its prologue. In this manuscript's iteration of the CA, Urban identifies "aberrant witnesses"--inconsistencies in glosses both Latin and Middle English--in MS Ashmole 35. "The poem's multi-temporal identity facilitates the development of a series of queer temporalities as the poem progresses, in which the past and/or the future disrupt the present, and the present disrupts both the past and the future" (308). He claims this "instability" makes the poem seem "positively queer" (310). Following his discussion of these inconsistencies in Ashmole 35, Urban concludes by restating his claim of the heterogeneity of the CA and its ability to produce multiple meanings. He then advocates for an editorial approach that "emphasizes variants and heterogeneity" (315), which he suggests we may accomplish in the digital sphere. [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Urban, Malte. Published Urban, Malte. "Gower Out of Time and Place." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 9 (2018), 303-17. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Out of Time and Place. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Alvar, Elena, Antonio Ocaña Cortijo and Manuela Faccon, eds. Published Alvar, Elena, Antonio Ocaña Cortijo and Manuela Faccon, eds. Confessio Amantis: Literatura moral y materia amorosa en Inglaterra y la Península Ibérica (siglos XIV-XV). Confessio Amantis, John Gower; Confissão do Amante (Robret Payn tr.) ; Confysión del Amante (Juan de Cuenca tr.). Edición trilingüe. 2 vols. (San Millán de la Cogolla: Cilengua, 2018). Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue": Since 1990, when Elena Alvar published her edition of the "Confysion del Amante," the Castilian translation of the "Confessio Amantis," the study of the "Iberian Gower" has experienced a significant boost, first as a result of the discovery of the manuscript with Portuguese translation in 1995, then with the editions of some of its books by Antonio Cortijo and others by Manuela Faccon, and with the celebration of the Third International Gower Congress in Spain in 2011. This trilingual edition of the text is a much-awaited new peak of that progression. Not only does it bring together the partial editions in a single and uniform publication, but its introduction succeeds as well in collecting and updating what is known about the Portuguese and Castilian medieval versions of the CA, their manuscripts, the translators and the translations, and the literary context in which they were produced, with a particular emphasis on the latter. Without question, these are all invaluable resources for researchers interested in the study of the Iberian CAs, or in the larger manuscript history of Gower's poem. The parallel disposition of Middle English, medieval Portuguese and medieval Castilian throughout the two volumes is, in that regard, priceless for anyone wishing to study the texts comparatively. The editors use Macaulay's edition for the Middle English text, and Elena Alvar's for the Castilian (without her paleographical notations, and modernizing some graphical aspects); in the case of the Portuguese text, the partial editions by Cortijo and Faccon are used, also with a slightly modernized spelling, capitalization and punctuation, in order--as the editors note--to enhance the intelligibility of the Iberian texts for modern readers. While this is certainly achieved, the challenges posed by the parallel edition of three texts--one of them in verse--have been less successfully resolved. Even in two substantial volumes the layout results in a very packed page of tiny print. Although to some degree visual aids of tables/charts separating the texts and their sections are helpful, headings fail to provide any reference to individual Books of the poem--a decision that makes following the text quite a laborious task. Nevertheless, this trilingual edition represents a significant milestone for Gower studies, and its availability for readers and researchers of Gower and his reception is most welcome. [ASH. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1.] 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 Confessio Amantis: Literatura moral y materia amorosa en Inglaterra y la Península Ibérica (siglos XIV-XV). Confessio Amantis, John Gower; Confissão do Amante (Robret Payn tr.) ; Confysión del Amante (Juan de Cuenca tr.). Edición trilingüe. 2 vols. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bertolet's interpretative base is the emergence of a cash-based economy in the late fourteenth century, and its conflicted relationship with the still-dominant oath-and-labor-based economy characteristic of feudalism. This serves as the lens through which he reads Gower's tale of a king whose illness can only be cured by intercourse with a woman; his steward who, charged by the king to bring him a woman willing to share his bed for £100 in gold, provides his own wife to the king, seeking the gold only for himself, and the wife who, however reluctantly, performs so much to the king's satisfaction that he marries her after banishing the steward for his greed, as one who has his "oghne astat reviled" (152). Bertolet recognizes that the tale "on the surface" examines "the injustice of prostituting one's own wife," but, in an analysis that draws on contemporary economic theory, Aristotle's "Politics" and "Ethics," Aquinas' commentary on the latter, and Nicole Oresme's "De moneta," argues that "Gower's reason for telling this story is much more sophisticated than this and . . . follows his general plan of exploring how the cash-based commercial economy affects feudal relationships" (144). The king and the woman are shown to be blameless under both cash- and labor-based economies, since "the king is in health with a wife and the potential for heirs. The new queen has earned her position as queen with her value appreciated" (153) and the steward, who "has done no honest labor . . . receives no commensurate reward" (154). Thus "the two economic systems stay distinct, even if the steward attempted to blur them" (154). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig. Published Bertolet, Craig. "'Money Earned, Money Won': The Problem of Labor Pricing in Gower's 'Tale of the King and the Steward's Wife'." In Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature. Ed. Craig E. Bertolet and Robert Epstein (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 143-56. 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 "Money Earned, Money Won": The Problem of Labor Pricing in Gower's "Tale of the King and the Steward's Wife." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Drawing obliquely on Andrew Galloway's assertion that medieval "social thought was often framed in terms of an economy of need," Gastle examines what must have been Gower's anxiety as a practicing poet in a time when writing poems wasn't an established profession. Gastle frames his argument in economic terms: does a poem qualify as a legitimate artifact of labor? His answer: "The construction of an economic or fiscal identity within his poetry allows Gower to define a new role for poetic work in the changing economies of medieval England; in short, Gower needs 'economy' and mercantile or commercial tropes in order to define his own poetic identity" (128). The essay thus extends Gastle's previous work on Gower's uses of business terminology. In this context, Gastle reads the meeting on the Thames with Richard II and the king's request for "som newe thinge" as a commission to labor--in essence, a business transaction which thereby valorizes the poetic work that becomes the "Confessio Amantis." Gastle bolsters his broader claim with a detailed analysis of Gower's tale "The Trump of Death" in Book I, arguing by way of "lucus a non lucendo" that the King who abases himself before two beggarly pilgrims, is condemned by his court and brother for doing so, and punishes his brother by way of instructing him in humility is actually acting not out of strength but rather out of a particular need (pace Galloway): "The King is interested in using the pilgrims to establish his economic authority as well as his temporal authority, under the guise of his own act of humility" (136). For Gastle, the King temporarily takes on the role of the "other," the impoverished, to show that all have value; simultaneously, by recognizing what he is not, he re-establishes himself as ruler. Gastle equates this process to Gower's acceptance of the commission to produce a good for Richard, ostensibly expecting payment of some kind, as recognition on Gower's part that no "skill or profession is too important, too elevated, or too sacrosanct to be paid for"--which, in Gower's view would be "tantamount to saying that it has no value" (138). Thus, Gastle concludes, Gower's "interaction with economic and mercantile issues . . . are necessary to his project of defining poetic identity and labor" (139). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gastle, Brian. Published Gastle, Brian. "The Need for Economy: Poetic Identity and Trade in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature. Ed. Craig E. Bertolet and Robert Epstein (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 127-42. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Need for Economy: Poetic Identity and Trade in Gower's Confessio Amantis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Jenni Nuttall's essay "charts the development of the lenvoy (or envoy) in English courtly verse in the fifteenth century, looking in particular at the poetry of Hoccleve and Lydgate" (35). Engaging Jonathan Culler's work on lyric, she concludes, "Form is thus an alluring fabrication of meaningfulness. Such self-generated authority is inculcated rhyme by rhyme, metrical line by metrical line, stanza by stanza" (35). For Nuttall's purposes, such self-authorization occurs in the envoy or lenvoy; furthermore, these textual apparatus serve as lines of communication between authors, readers, et al. (36). Chaucer and Gower establish the Middle English lenvoy. Nuttall asserts, "The lenvoy's flexible functions made this technical term of poetics usefully malleable, and Middle English authors and their scribes thus expand usage of the term beyond its strict definition as an optional element of a ballade" (37). Nuttall, at this point of her essay, shifts her focus to the new purposes for which Hoccleve and Lydgate will use the lenvoy. She considers how this structure uses the humility topos with conspicuous skill. Nuttall expands on Robert Meyer-Lee's discussion of such topoi, adding that they may serve as "affirmation of poetic license and self-authorization" and a "newly emerging license of form" (39, 40). After examining specific uses of the lenvoy in both Hoccleve and Lydgate (especially "Fall of Princes"), Nuttall provocatively concludes that the lenvoy might be a "significant location from which we might excavate Middle English literary theory and poetics" (45).] [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nuttall, Jenni. Published Nuttall, Jenni. "Lydgate and the Lenvoy." Exemplaria 30.1 (2018): 35-48. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion 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 Lydgate and the Lenvoy. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The "virtual coterie" that Lydgate constructs in his "Pilgrimage of the Life of Man," Perry argues, comprises the people named or alluded to in the poem--Chaucer, Guillaume de Deguileville, the Virgin Mary, and Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury--the people who as source, inspiration, or patron had agency in producing the work, lending it validity or authority and, in turn, enabling Lydgate to exert his own kind of agency to give his patron advice and to shape literary tradition at the same time. Outlining the concept and coining the term, Perry describes virtual coteries as the lists of names given in a poem, often in a prologue or dedication: "a record of distributed agency that details what a poet, a patron, or a source does to make a poem." Virtual coteries are "rhetorical performances, poetic displays that associate different individuals . . . . living and dead, real and fictional, local and distant," and allow for "a complex mediation between writer and patron." In the case of Lydgate's "Pilgrimage," the coterie allows Lydgate to advise Salisbury about the war in France and to influence "the Chaucerian tradition as it is being constructed in the fifteenth century" (671). Much of the "complex mediation" Perry explores in the "Pilgrimage" depends upon the fact that Salisbury was husband to Chaucer's granddaughter, Alice, and it is hard to imagine too many other poets being able to construct a virtual coterie of quite this sort or in quite this way, a limitation, perhaps, in more general application of the concept, despite its usefulness for describing Lydgate's roles as advisor to his patron Salisbury and as "Chaucerian" poet. Gower occupies an odd place in Perry's argument and perhaps in Lydgate's coterie, as Perry tells us: it is "unclear whether Gower is a member of this or any other of Lydgate's virtual coteries. Lydgate never mentions Gower [although he does in "Fall of Princes" 9.3412] and it is unclear whether Lydgate's audience, specifically Salisbury here, would have recognized Gower's technique in Lydgate's hands" (695). Yet, Perry argues, "In Praise of Peace" [IPP] is a major thematic and stylistic influence on Lydgate's "Pilgrimage": as Gower "praises the nobility while critiquing their actions at the same time" (689), so does Lydgate, and the younger poet adapts the "formal device of dual address" (695) modeled in Gower's IPP. "Lydgate's aims are Gower's," Perry tells us, "the earlier poet's pacifism an inspiration to the later one at a different time in the same war" (695). Praise and advice are a familiar combination in the mirrors of princes tradition (especially those addressed to a patron), and it is not unusual to find a writer addressing particular and universal audiences simultaneously. Moreover, Perry may be stretching things to call a dual audience a "formal device," especially since he acknowledges that Lydgate's technique only "resembles" Gower's, indeed "inverts" it: "Gower's dual mode of address speaks for a class, Lydgate's for a coterie" (694). Some verbal echoes would help to establish Perry's case for IPP as a source of the "Pilgrimage," although his argument that Lydgate "silenced Gower" and thereby "bolsters Chaucer's positon in literary history, while diminishing Gower's" (695) is a new take on an important issue. Perry's analysis of reciprocity between patronage and poetry is valuable--discussing the virtual coterie of Lydgate's "Title and Pedigree of Henry VI" as well as that of the "Pilgrimage"--and his discussion of Gower's IPP adds dimension to what Robert R. Edwards has called the "Trace of Gower" in Lydgate (South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 [2015]: 156-70; see eJGN 35.1) while clarifying Lydgate's virtual coteries as one facet of the Chaucerian tradition. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Perry, R. D. Published Perry, R. D. "Lydgate's Virtual Coteries: Chaucer's Family and Gower's Pacifism in the Fifteenth Century." Speculum 93 (2018): 669-98. Gower Subject In Praise of Peace 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 Lydgate's Virtual Coteries: Chaucer's Family and Gower's Pacifism in the Fifteenth Century. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gerber's essay encourages readers to recognize aspects of the intertextuality of the "Confessio Amantis." She describes a medieval "grammar school tradition that interrelated classical narratives with studies of the natural world" (259)--often via commentaries, mnemonics, and diagrams--and "consistently connected mythological narratives to encyclopedic knowledge" (260), arguing that this tradition is the basis of similarities between Gower's poem and medieval encyclopedias. Gerber also aims to affirm the unity of CA, indicating that the inclusion of scientific material in Book VII (especially astronomy and astrology)--often regarded by critics as digressive--is of a piece with, and even derives from, the intertwining of medieval natural science and mythological narrative found in medieval encyclopedias and commentaries. Similarly, elsewhere in CA, the nativity of the Gorgons (I.389-97) amalgamates "planetary and mythological features" (269) in ways that Ovid's original does not; the account of the Chaldeans (5.752-65) interprets "polytheism as natural science" (270); and in the Cephalus account in Book IV, Gower "uses mythological appropriations to develop not only ethical exegesis but also natural science" (272). One thinks also of Chaucer's "Complaint of Mars" and "Knight's Tale" as well as--perhaps--the multilayered meanings of the Pearl-maiden as child, beloved, flower, and precious gem. Amalgamations of ethics, love poetry, and science (especially astral sciences) in Middle English literature are not rare, but connecting them with medieval school traditions and encyclopedias, as Gerber does, helps us to see how broad-based this habit of mind was. However, I think Gerber over specifies things at times, as when she presents the program of illustrations in CA manuscript New York Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M. 126 as something of a direct extension of "schoolboy's training," declaring "that the structure and information that Gower co-opted from his academic training [and replicated in CA] extended beyond grammar school classrooms by the second half of the fifteenth century to appear in at least one aristocrat's library" (284). Declaring in general terms that the starry skies in the manuscript's "miniatures emphasize the relationship between narratives and natural sciences" (278) and that the Arion image in the manuscript "provides a miniature version of the Confessio's amalgamation of natural and narrative compositions" (281-82), Gerber argues for rather direct, causal relations among intertextual features that may be better understood as coexistent phenomena in a stage of intellectual history. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gerber, Amanda. Published Gerber, Amanda. "The Mythological Sciences of John Gower, Medieval Classicists, and Morgan MS M. 126." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 40 (2018): 257-88; 6 b&w figs. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Mythological Sciences of John Gower, Medieval Classicists, and Morgan MS M. 126. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Smith's essay is tightly packed, learned, and provocative. His final paragraph summarizes the essentials of his argument: "Gower's and Chaucer's poems both use the household to examine the precarious situation of the cultural past in late fourteenth-century England, and in particular the position that poetry will occupy. For Gower, the household is a space of order and tradition (what he calls 'solitus') that is in danger from within (from the gentry) and without (from the 'rustici'). The threat they pose is general precisely because the household is also an allegory of the rules and expectations that govern Gower's high poetic style in the 'Vox clamantis.' But like all allegories it does not contain the whole story. The noise that troubles it, the murmurings and the 'yhas,' are also a part of the very texture of Gower's poem, and, whether he intends it or not, his poem both records the turmoil around him and forges a way to articulate it, and therefore to find some kind of resolution in it. Yet the 'Vox clamantis' is also a memorial to a kind of poetry that lives only in the past, and that only makes sense when looking toward the past that the present is destroying. Chaucer's poem, on the other hand, imagines the anarchy and the noise of the present as the very sound of the household: the purpose of the Domus Dedaly is simply to reshape, not to control, the noise that comes into it. What resounds as anarchic buzzing returns to earth as a hopeless muddle of truth and lies . . . . For Chaucer, the allegory of the household comprehends the social and political instability of the realm, but reimagines it as the very condition of a poetry that emerges not just in the household that is the realm but in the household of all utterance, even the most banal and quotidian English of the day" (128). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Smith, D. Vance. Published Smith, D. Vance. "The National Allegory of the Household: 'Domus' and 'Lingua' in John Gower's 'Vox Clamantis' and Geoffrey Chaucer's 'House of Fame'." In C. M. Woolgar, ed. The Elite Household in England, 1100-1550: Proceedings of the 2016 Harlaxton Symposium. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2018. 110-28. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The National Allegory of the Household: "Domus" and "Lingua" in John Gower's "Vox Clamantis" and Geoffrey Chaucer's "House of Fame." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bahr's question in this essay is "Does knowledge of a manuscript's patron or circumstances of production . . . close off and thus subvert its potentialities as an aesthetic form?" (165). Versions of this question have preoccupied Bahr for some years. (See, e.g., "Reading Codicological Form in John Gower's Trentham Manuscript" [2011]; "Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London" [2013].) Here again his focus is London, British Library, MS Additional 59495 (olim Trentham), more specifically how the "tension between the synchronic and the diachronic [sharpens] when we consider the allusive intertextuality of many of Trentham's texts" (166). The manuscript-as-object, Bahr argues, "was always bound to exceed" whatever were Gower's "intentions when he began compiling Trentham." Or, as he puts it more broadly a little further on: "manuscript studies as a discipline" should not prize "historically discrete and verifiable data points" exclusively, but recognize that manuscripts' "vitality depends upon continued reading and creative reinterpretations" (166). To demonstrate this method, Bahr roves freely throughout the contents of the manuscript, comparing elements with, and surfacing allusions to, the "Book of the Duchess," "Parlement of Foules," and "Inferno" 5, 127-42 (Paolo and Francesca). He reads, at the same time, a variety of ways the manuscript, produced after the usurpation and seemingly intended as a gift to Henry IV, also contains nuanced--and not negative--backward glances at the reign of Richard II. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bahr, Arthur. Published In Chaucer and the Subversion of Form, ed. Thomas A. Prendergast and Jessica Rosenfeld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 165-81 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 Birdsong, Love, and the House of Lancaster: Gower Reforms Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Reid "reconsiders a selection of Shakespearean moments that have been widely classified in contemporary scholarship as 'Ovidian'" in order to uncover "the under-acknowledged, spectral presence of the medieval in the making of such moments" (2). "It is," she asserts, "often a transhistorical, polyvocal, and multilingual conglomerate of intertexts that coalesce to form an 'Ovidian' allusion in Shakespeare's works" (4). Gower figures large in her study, throughout. Chapter 1 presents a close reading of the seventeenth-century "Chaucer's Ghoast," whence she derives a central sense of the "ambiguities of 'antiquity' in early modern usage, drawing attention to the profound intersections between the Ovidian, the Chaucerian, and the Gowerian" (6). Chapter 2 is part "reviewing and contrasting the various states of Shakespeare-and-Ovid, Shakespeare-and-Chaucer, and Shakespeare-and-Gower scholarship" (7). The focus of chapter 3 is "the medieval resonances of an 'Ovidian' reference to Ariadne in 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona'" which she traces to Chaucer and Gower (7). Chapter 5 argues that "the 'Ovidian' references to Narcissus evident in the interactions between Olivia and Viola in "Twelfth Night" build not only upon the "Metamorphoses"' Latin account of the youth's self-infatuation, but also upon a strikingly different tradition (featuring a heterosexual rather than a homosexual Narcissus) that seems to have first entered English literary tradition by way of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'" (7). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Reid, Lindsay Ann. Published Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2018. Gower Subject Inlfuence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Speed offers in this essay a clear and flexible commentary on CA that might well find its way into a critical anthology intended for collegiate use. She treats CA in as an example of the "counter-Virgilian tradition" (381) of the "translatio imperii" from Troy to London (by way of Rome), and she contrasts the heroic-epic destiny in Virgil's "Aeneid" with the emphasis on "human decision-making" (390) in works about Troy by Ovid, Guido delle Colonne, Benoît de Sainte-Maure, and Gower. The Virgilian / "counter-Virgilian" distinction is not new, nor are the lineaments of the transmission of the story summarized here, but, after noting Gower's concern with Troy in "Vox Clamantis" and "Cronica Tripertita," Speed sharpens awareness of the fundamental importance of Trojan material for the CA, thematically and structurally, charting the twenty Trojan narratives of the work and their sources (none of them directly Virgilian), observing that the twenty "represent over one-fifth of the tales by volume" of the work, along with additional "brief exemplary allusions in the frame story" (385) and other allusions and references. This demonstration of the quantity of Trojan material in CA is matched by the quality of Speed's discussions of selected paired Trojan tales and paired Trojan characters, showing, for example, that the content of the "second and second-last" of Gower's Trojan tales ("The Trojan Horse" and "Paris and Helen," both from Benoît) "self-evidently frames the legendary context for all the others, and their positioning arguably constructs an unavoidable discursive significance for all" (385). Speed does not say that focus on Trojan political "treachery and folly" (387) obviates the penitential concerns of Gower's frame narrative--hypocrisy in the Horse narrative or sacrilege when Paris and Helen meet in a temple--but that "counter-Virgilian" politics are never far away from the personal concerns, layering and analogizing political and penitential themes. In similar fashion, the "prominence" of Achilles and Ulysses, as opposed to Aeneas, in CA "works against any possibility of glamourizing Troy" or Virgil's hero (388) while keeping in focus the importance of the legend of Troy as a political antecedent to Gower's contemporary London. Moreover, the original Prologue to the CA and its revised version, Speed shows, as well as its original and revised conclusions, combine poetic and political awareness, evincing the importance of the "myth of Troy" for Gower and for English poetry as well as for the nation of England--"translatio studii et imperii" (392). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Speed, Diane. Published Medieval Translator / Traduire au Moyen Âge 14 (2018): 379-93. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Translatio Imperii" and Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Taylor's primary focus in "The Motives of Reeds" is Chaucer, particularly the Wife of Bath's invocation of the story of Midas in her prologue. The story of Midas--and the broader network of invocations of Midas--provides a means to explore Chaucer's relationship to the classical tradition as a vernacular poet; Taylor is especially interested in the story's implications for understanding Chaucer's notion of "translatio auctoritatis" in relation to Ovid. After an overview of the Ovidian version of the Midas story, Taylor examines medieval receptions of Midas in Gower, Machaut, and Jean de Meun. For Ovid, artistic self-consciousness is key to the narrative; Midas gets his infamous ears as a punishment for judging against Apollo in a piping competition, and when Midas's servant whispers this truth into the marshy ground, it is the reeds that grow there that make the story public. Thus, the story--and its transmission--draw attention to the challenges of speakers and hearers in oral and aural transmission: the audience and the speaker often take away different meanings. Chaucer's changes to this tale, making the barber/servant into Midas's wife, is often used to position the Wife of Bath as a bad reader; however, reading this version of Midas alongside others suggests alternative possibilities. Gower tells of Midas and the famous golden touch, but he ends his version not with Midas the fool, as in the "Ovide Moralisé," but with a reasonable Midas tempted by gold but in the end repentant. Gower thus loosens the hold of the commentaries on this narrative interpretation, engaging in a long tradition of discursive appropriation. From here, Taylor moves to Machaut, whose Midas is linked to Paris as a figure of poor judgment, particularly literary judgment, who favors the wrong kind of vernacular poetry. Chaucer, like Gower, truncates his source's ending, with no reeds spreading the word. Thus, Taylor suggests, the point of Chaucer's references to Ovid is in fact to see transmission and its differences, thus pointing to the fiction of transmission of "The Canterbury Tales" itself and, further, to the tribulations of hearing and mishearing. [KMcS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Taylor, Karla. Published In Later Middle English Literature, Materiality, and Culture: Essays in Honor of James M. Dean, eds. Brian Gastle and Erick Kelemen (Lanham, MD.: University of Delaware Press, 2018), pp. 25-41. 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 Motives of Reeds: The Wife of Bath's Midas and Literary Tradition. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Warren takes an ecocritical approach, seeking "a full exploration of how and why birds mattered in a range of poetic texts from across the Middle Ages"(3), those texts being "The Seafarer," Exeter Book riddles, "The Owl and the Nightingale," "The Parlement of Foules," and the "Confessio Amantis." The latter occupies chapter 5, "Birds' Form: Enabling Desire and Identities in 'Confessio Amantis'" (179-217). His professed concerns lie less with examining birds as emblems or metaphors--the more usual approach to the subject--than with demonstrating that "the sources available to us insist on a more complex history, in which the multitude of native birds observable in England's habitats registered meaningfully in human experiences" (5)--particularly and pointedly in Gower's eyes. Warren finds the "Tale of Tereus" (CA V. 5551-6047) apt ground to illustrate a kind of "hybridity" that he identifies as a characteristically Gowerian gesture, in which birds and humans evince commingled aetiologies, sharply observed: "Ovid's Philomela merely flies to the forest . . . but Gower's is an overtly named species whose habitat, seasonal habits, mellifluous song and elusive nature are described at length" (215). Essentially, following part way Diane Watt and Hugh White, Warren reads the moral lessons of the CA as ambiguous, and building upon those arguments finds in "Tereus" and the poem generally evidence to identify a middle space between simply animal and simply human, one "suggestive and revealing, not simply derogatory and detestable" (202). Ultimately, "Gower's avian-human conformations most overtly demonstrate that medieval conceptions of, and interactions with, the natural world could engage the nonhuman in human interests in ways that accentuate the desirable or necessary presence of the nonhuman" (222). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Warren, Michael J. Published Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2018. 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 Birds in Medieval English Poetry: Metaphors, Realities, Transformations. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published In Later Middle English Literature, Materiality, and Culture: Essays in Honor of James M. Dean, ed. Brian Gastle and Erick Kelemen (Lanham, MD: University of Delaware Press, 2018), pp. 91-103. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review As the title and its allusion to Jorge Luis Borges's short story "Funes the Memorious" makes clear, R.F. Yeager's essay takes as its focus the notion of memory and recollection, moving from the "Funes" to Boethius's "Consolatio" and Maximianus's "Elegies." Throughout, Yeager demonstrates how each of these texts--"Consolatio," "Confessio," "Elegies," and "Funes"--"have at their core the problem of time." (94) Whether the prodigious memory of Funes, the quest for eternity in Boethius, or the "steady lamentation" (94) of Maximianus's complaints of age-related impotence, these examples help clarify how Amans, a figure characterized by his lack of memory, is nevertheless a construct who reflects some of Gower's thinking about time. Yeager discusses the origins of the CA and its origin in a moment of time--in an apparently chance encounter between Gower and Richard II on the Thames--and the choice to write the CA in Middle English speak to Gower's "growing thoughtfulness about the nature and urgencies of time." (95) Contextualizing the CA as a book that, at least in its Ricardian recension, has this watery origin, Yeager then describes some of the beginning characteristics of the CA that encode the value of time and, specifically, the past in the "Prologue," including the "mutability of time" in the discussion of old books and the images from Nebuchadnezzar's Dream. What these elements suggest, then, according to Yeager, is an urge to confession and repentance in the present and to avoid pain and embrace peace by knowing the past, in light of the future which is ever approaching. The essay concludes by returning to "Funes" and reading Borges's short story alongside CA in order to parse out the importance of the "now" in Gower's conceptions of history, the past, and time. Remarking that Funes and his memory are ultimately about stasis and death, Yeager demonstrates that Amans's forgetting is not static, but about the "memory in process." Remembering, Yeager reminds the reader, is, for Gower, a moral act, a call in the now for repentance. [WR. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] 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 Amans the Memorious. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review (This journal appears to be inaccessible currently and the essay is in Korean. The following is an English abstract provided by the author.) "This study tries to locate the interface of the moral and political aspects found in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.' The epithet 'moral' has traditionally been attached to Gower. Gower has also been under suspicion for being too political, especially because he changed the recipients of dedication from Richard II to Henry of Derby who will be enthroned later as Henry IV. Focusing on the Prologue and Book VII of the 'Confessio Amantis,' this study explicates the historical character of the poem and argues that the tales reflect the main concern of his age. For example, his emphasis on the importance of law in the governance of kingdom [sic] was an inverse mirror image of the misgovernance of Richard II. Gower had hoped to educate the king to be a moral person who could rule himself and his kingdom. Frustrated by Richard's misgovernance, Gower turned to Henry." Author/Editor Author/Editor Choi, Yejung. Published Choi, Yejung. "Moral and Political Gower: A Study on the Prologue and Book VII of Confessio Amantis." ("도덕적인 가우어, 정치적인 가우어: 『연인의 고백』(Confessio Amantis)의 프롤로그와 7권을 중심으로.") Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (Korea) 28 no. 3 (2018): 307–330. UISSN 1738-2556 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 Moral and Political Gower: A Study on the Prologue and Book VII of Confessio Amantis." ("도덕적인 가우어, 정치적인 가우어: 『연인의 고백』(Confessio Amantis)의 프롤로그와 7권을 중심으로. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Ganim traces a history of popular movements described as anarchic in later medieval literature, with particular focus on political writings; he extends this trend into twentieth-century medievalisms. For Ganim, this trend is more dialectic than a direct lineage; he is particularly interested in links between apocalypticism and anarchy. The piece opens with a history of the intellectual and indeed theological underpinnings of this connection, tracing the thought of Joachim of Fiore into Franciscan spirituality. Ganim builds on James Dean's work in "The World Grown Old," identifying a "fundamentally pessimistic and entropic view of the world [that] permeates a spectrum of genres" (75). From this foundation, then, Ganim moves to exploring how English writers engage this worldview, beginning with Chaucer and Gower; he notes not only the small, potentially direct moments in which Chaucer engages with the 1381 Rising but also traces the themes of apocalypse, chaos, and popular revolt into works such as the "Knight's Tale." As he turns to Gower, Ganim focuses on the "Visio Anglie" of the "Vox Clamantis": he suggests that both writers present not just moments of crisis, but also everyday life as itself anarchic in more mundane ways. Ganim traces this mundane anarchy to patterns of social anxiety in the late fourteenth century as well as to a growing concern about personal taboos in confessional manuals. From there, he outlines some of the afterlives of this connection between anarchy and the Middle Ages in later medievalisms, ranging from the Sex Pistols to "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," with a particularly nuanced reading of William Morris's "News from Nowhere" and "The Dream of John Ball." By way of conclusion, he returns to medieval literature, tracking ideals of collective action in the miracles recounted in John Lydgate's "Miracles of St. Edmund." [KMcS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ganim, John. Published Ganim, John. "Anarchy in the UK: Chaos and Community in Late Medieval Political Writings." In Later Middle English Literature, Materiality, and Culture: Essays in Honor of James M. Dean, ed. Brian Gastle and Erick Kelemen (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2018), pp. 71-89. 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 Anarchy in the UK: Chaos and Community in Late Medieval Political Writings. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Duffell is a metricist, seemingly a very good one, but not a student of Gower, and thus a bit out of touch with scholarship more recent than John Fisher's. He is also given to heavy dependence on "technical jargon," e.g., "four-ictic dolnik": which is to say, "a line with a fixed number of beats, and with offbeats containing between 0 and 2 syllables, with four beats" (289); one is grateful for the glossary (287-98). He sees Gower and Chaucer collaborating to reform English poetics, with Chaucer probably contributing more to Gower's development than vice-versa: "Collaboration must be expected because the directions in which each was taking versifying were remarkably similar: they regulated both AN and ME octosyllables, and they both experimented with deviant decasyllables, lines such as no French nor English had ever composed, and lines that deviated from the existing norms in parallel ways" (100). The weight Duffell places on "personalities," exacerbated by the outdatedness of relevant bibliography, (e.g.: MS Additional 59495 [olim Trentham] was given to Henry IV, the balades of the "Traitié" were "for the bride of his old age" [101]) sometimes gets in the way of his sharper analyses, but his major points--that "C[onfessio] A[mantis] qualifies as the first poem 'in strict iambic tetrameter' [Duffell's emphasis] in the English language" (111); that "it is just possible that Gower's example influenced Chaucer to make more sparing use of headless lines in S[ir[ T[hopas] and to be more tolerant of a regular iambic rhythm" (113); "it was John Gower and not Geoffrey Chaucer, who transformed the duple-time four-beat dolnik into the iambic tetrameter. Gower did this in two languages: in AN by making his octosyllables iambic, and in ME by eschewing headless lines and epic caesura" (135)--are significant, and should be noted. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Duffell, Martin J. Published Duffell, Martin J. Chaucer's Verse Art in its European Context. Tempe, AZ: ACMRS, 2018). Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer's Verse Art in its European Context. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This valuable study ". . . deliberately diverges from existing scholarship on Shakespeare's reception of Ovid by looking at yet also [sic] beyond the Roman poet's place of primacy in the humanist schoolroom. It equally diverges from scholarship on Shakespeare's reception of Chaucer and Gower by considering how their spectral presences can be perceived in Shakespeare's texts other than 'Troilus and Cressida,' 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' 'The Two Noble Kinsmen,' and 'Pericles'--in other words, those dramatic pieces whose plots have overt Chaucerian or Gowerian analogues" (49). Reid finds that much of what she calls "the under-acknowledged, spectral presence of the medieval" (2) in Shakespeare's work turns out to be from the "Confessio Amantis." She notes especially (chapter 5) that the close affiliations of "the interactions between Olivia and Viola in 'Twelfth Night' build not only upon the 'Metamorphoses' . . . but also upon a strikingly different tradition . . . that seems to have entered English literary tradition by way of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'" (7). By way of making her larger argument, Reid offers a uniquely insightful analysis of the little-known "Chaucer's Ghoast" (which proves to be largely extracts from CA), presenting thereby a compact survey of early Modern readers' engagement with Gower (9-38, and Appendix 1). She finds Gower's "spectre" significantly influential on many well-known Shakespearean scenes (e.g., in "The Taming of the Shrew": "When Petruccio boasts that he is ready to take on a rich wife, whether she be 'as foul as was Florentius' love,' his reference is seemingly to Gower's tale of the knight, Florent, from the 'Confessio Amantis'") (67), and argues for the influence of the CA on Caxton's edition of the "Metamorphoses" (177-78), with major implications, in her view, for much sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry, including Sidney's "Old Arcadia" (esp. 188-92). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Reid, Lindsay Ann Published Reid, Lindsay Ann. Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2018. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Herrold, Megan. Published Herrold, Megan. Productive Misogyny in Medieval and Early Modern Literature: Women, Justice, and Social Order. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Southern California, 2018. 267 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A84.12(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review In her dissertation, Herrold shows how in medieval and early modern literature "misogyny offers surprising ethical and political philosophical opportunities to explore gendered constructions of personhood." She considers "how authors ranging from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, including Chaucer, Gower, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Aemilia Lanyer, appropriate conventionally misogynistic figures to rethink radically the ethical and political capacities of personhood, and therefore justice, in society" (7-8). Literature of "productive" misogyny, Herrold tells us, contemplates "the place and/or the idea of women in a system of social order . . . ethically and seriously," and, in this literature, either society changes "to more justly accommodate the troubling woman within it" or, more conservatively, the troubling woman is herself transformed "to render the systemic injustice she elucidates moot in her particular case" (8). She reads Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, Gower's Tale of Florent, and "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle" as examples of her more conservative category, together comprising "a commentary on the limitations of individual autonomy in society-building: the just social order is forged by shunting the notion of compromised subjectivity onto women in general and the loathly lady in particular" (21). Each of the individual versions "stages and restages the fiction of men's autonomous subjectivity; [while] the recursive nature of the tales reveals the toll patriarchy takes on women." When considered together as a "genre"--arguably, not a very precise use of the term here--the loathly-lady stories come "very close to an exploration of a radical, post-patriarchal order" (27). In each poem, the presiding social order is tested by a "loathly" woman, but that social order--unjust though it is--is neither corrected nor replaced. Nevertheless, the reiterated challenges--and ongoing feminist readings of them--prompt questions for Herrold about how such corrections or replacements might be imagined when individual women are no longer subsumed allegorically into a single, universalized, compromised subjectivity. Extending her arguments into early modern England, Herrold incorporates queer attention to Spenser's Britomart as a "gender-bending loathly lady" (22). She moves to analysis of Shakespeare's uses of troubling women in several of his plays, including those where the traditional bed-trick plot engages questions of justice and those where Lady Fortune is involved in depictions of gambling with justice. In her final two chapters, Herrold addresses Lanyer's fusion of Petrarchanism and Marian compassion in her "Salve Dues Rex Judaeorum" and closes with exploration of "the ways in which the tradition of representing justice as female--as Lady Justice--allegorically justifies the exclusion of women from the political order even while acknowledging its dependence on them" (23). [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 Productive Misogyny in Medieval and Early Modern Literature: Women, Justice, and Social Order. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Ascari intends "monumental" to be taken in two ways: both as the placement of Chaucer at the head of an incipient vernacular literary canon, and as the subject of "his" (since Chaucer's body was never in it) tomb, placed in Westminster Abbey by the Catholic Nicholas Brigham in 1556. The first of these, Ascari argues, results from the development of printing, and the second--motivated and facilitated by the first--from the erection of the "tomb" itself. Gower figures briefly but importantly in Ascari's narrative, which focuses on Thomas Berthelette's two editions of the Confessio Amantis (1532 and 1554) and Gower's tomb (which did contain his body) in what is now Southwark Cathedral. (Rather strangely, Ascari neglects Caxton's prior printing of the CA in 1483, and whatever contribution it might have made to his argument.) Ascari quotes at length Berthelette's introductory "To the Reder" in which the printer connects Gower's tomb with Chaucer's original, humbler burial-site in the floor of Westminster Abbey, in order to argue that Brigham was motivated to provide the monumental "tomb" for Chaucer by Berthelette's editions and by the clearly Catholic tomb of Gower, in the hope that Chaucer could thus be claimed as a Catholic poet (416-20). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ascari, Maurizio. Published Ascari, Maurizio. "Monumental Chaucer: Print Culture, and Conflict, and Canonical Resilience." Chaucer Review 53 (2018): 402-27. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Monumental Chaucer: Print Culture, and Conflict, and Canonical Resilience. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "A central premise of this book," Drimmer writes, "is that the work of illumination both responds and contributes to the entry and circulation of new ideas about English literary authorship, political history, and book production in the fifteenth century" (4). Her boundaries are 1403-76, the earlier date corresponding to the earliest record of the formation into a single company of "text writers, limners, and 'other good people' who also bind and sell books"--what eventually became the Company of Stationers--and the latter the year Caxton first set up his press in London (24-5). The problem she describes that faced illustrators during this period was how to depict an English "author" when there was no established category for such an entity yet established (chapter 2, 53-84). The problem was especially difficult with Chaucer and Gower, and to a lesser degree Lydgate--the three writers she discusses as examples--because their works were much in demand, and they utilized fictive personae as central narrative techniques. (N.B.: Drimmer limits her discussion to manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis.) The problem--"a failure of cultural precedent to provide a bibliographic context for Gower's English innovations" (91)--as it relates to Gower is the focus of her third chapter. Drimmer sees the variant images of Amans/Gower as a young or old man as the result. Were the illuminators to provide an image of the "historical Gower, the 'auctor' of the extrinsic prologue (that is, the 'Prologus'), or the 'John Gower' who identifies himself in response to Venus' questioning at the end of the poem, the fictional persona introduced by the intrinsic prologue?" (93). Drimmer detects hesitancy, even anxiety, on the part of illuminators who strove to get things right, and argues that the here-to-fore undiscussed crossed hands (borrowed, she argues, from images of the Annunciation) in the various images of the lover-as-confessant derive from attempts to encompass "the poem's conflict, pushing the protagonist-poet's confrontation with death, sex, and authorship of the self into the foreground" (109). Ultimately the illuminators of Gower's CA manuscripts were forced into "conflating the identities of creator and creature, and in mobilizing allusions to the Virgin Annunciate, the humbled retainer, the dying devout, and the officious donor, illuminators endowed the author of the "Confessio Amantis" with a body whose most consistent characteristic is its subjection, its availability to the dictates of someone else" (112). Chapter 6 (189-223) is a close study of the illumination cycle of New York, Morgan Library and Museum MS M.126, produced "over sixty years after Gower's death . . . for Edward IV and his queen consort Elizabeth Woodville" in 1471 (189). This manuscript was part of a conscious plan by Edward to bolster his claim to rule "through the patronage of manuscripts and tapestries . . . with an almost exclusive focus on historical content (189). Hence "the pictorial cycle of the Morgan "Confessio" remains committed to a view of monarchic infallibility more radical than the respect for royal authority expressed in Gower's text" (192). She concludes: "Seen, in this respect, as a coherent work, the Morgan "Confessio" takes the political mission that Gower inculcated into his poem, written in the last decade of the fourteenth century, and revises it for the pressing needs and new political realities of the late fifteenth century court for which it was made" (223). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Drimmer, Sonja. Published Drimmer, Sonja. The Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403-1476. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). ISBN: 9780812250497; 9780812295382. 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 Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403-1476. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Throughout a body of work that spans many years, A.C. Spearing has brought more clarity to elements of medieval narrative than anyone else. His expressed purpose here is to reconsider Gower's "Tale of Virginius and Virginia" and Chaucer's "Physician's Tale" alongside "modern interpretations of them, in the light of the relation between medieval narrative and modern narrative theory" (1, abstract). That being a task too large for a single essay, however substantial--Spearing has indeed more than one book on this subject--his discussion soon narrows to focus on identifying the narrator of the two tales. His particular "bête noire" is the "unreliable narrator," a concept "first formulated in 1961" (3). This, he emphasizes, developed as an element in "post-1700 novels and short stories" (3) and hence is inconceivable as a device employed by medieval writers like Gower and Chaucer: "it is not part of the regular equipment of medieval poets but rather an unhistorical projection by modern medievalists" (4). "Unhistorical" is a key word here, as Spearing makes plain, noting "we should be scrupulous in distinguishing, as far as we can, between what we see in medieval texts and what we believe medieval tellers and readers might have seen in them" (7). Indeed, Spearing argues that for Gower and Chaucer stories found in sources were "history," and so thought factual--what was reported actually happened. This was especially true of classical sources like Livy, who first tells of Virginius and his daughter (and whose version Gower probably knew and used); details of the "plot" found there could not be substantially altered, although they might be embellished or downplayed here and there. In an extended argument, Spearing asserts that the "narrative I" present in the "Physician's Tale" is not the Physician but Chaucer himself (17-33), and that in Gower's "Virginius and Virginia," where the first-person pronoun is not used, the narrator is not Genius, nor the fictional "Amans/Gower" who presumably narrates the frame tale of his experience, but can only be the poet: "the creator of this subjectless subjectivity is the reteller of the story, John Gower" (11) As Spearing sums it up, "My argument is only that neither [Gower's nor Chaucer's tale] benefits by being understood as told by an unreliable narrator, and my aim has been not just to offer one more interpretation of each work but to investigate some principles on which interpretation might be based." Central to those principles is the idea that "greater attention [should be shown] to medieval assumptions about the retelling of old stories" (34). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Spearing, A. C. Published Spearing, A.C. "Narration in Two Versions of 'Virginius and 'Virginia'." Chaucer Review 54 (2019): 1-34. ISSN: 0009-2002. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Narration in Two Versions of "Virginius and Virginia." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Stone's title hardly does justice, either to the wide ground his essay covers, or to the significant erudition underlying it. (Nor can a summary of this brevity account for so rich a ramble.) For Stone, "the negotiation of the [Western] Schism is one of, if not 'the,' major through line [sic] uniting Gower's 'oeuvre.' Likewise, we might wonder if Gower's views of kingship were a function of the church rather than the other way around" (243). He concentrates primarily on the CA and to a lesser degree, "In Praise of Peace," while occasionally glancing at the MO. His argument proceeds in three parts. In the first he discusses "Gower's most extended discussion of the Schism: the Confessio Prologue's account of the 'statu cleri'" (209-10)--the spiritual state of the clergy under the Avignon "antipape" Clement IV. In the second he connects "this discussion of the crisis to the last two tales of Book II: the 'Tale of Boniface' and the 'Tale of Constantine and Sylvester'" (210). These, he argues, show Gower's view of the Schism "as a crisis of representation, a question of institutional and personal bodies through which Gower explores the political theologies of the papal bodies at the centre of the crisis" (210). In the third, he argues that charity, "Gower's putative solution to the Schism" is "in fact . . . the root of the vices that caused the Schism" (210)--a position that erroneously suggests an awkward resemblance to Wyclif's views on ecclesiastical property and papal "dominium," as a comparison with the "Lollard Chronicle" demonstrates (210 and 235-7). Finally, in a section aptly named "Towards a Conclusion," Stone comments on Gower's "conciliar poetics" and empathy with constitutionalism, as evident in "In Praise of Peace." [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stone, Zachary E. Published Stone, Zachary E.. "'Betwen tuo stoles': The Western Schism and the English Poetry of John Gower (1378-1417)." New Medieval Literatures 19 (2019): 205-43. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Betwen tuo stoles": The Western Schism and the English Poetry of John Gower (1378-1417). Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 lengthy narrative poem "Confessio Amantis" by John Gower (c.1330-1408), the poet of later medieval England, delight and education are termed as "lust" and "lore" respectively. The poem speaks of the "middel weie", meaning that the poet intends to keep a balance of lust and lore in the poem. This dissertation aims to demonstrate that the principle of the "lust" and "lore" balance is revealed throughout the poem. Using this as a foundation this study explores the authorship of the poet Gower in later medieval England and his CA. To date little significant attention has been paid to CA in Chinese academia. The issue of the "lust" and the "lore" in the poem has been in previous research mostly studied from the perspective of formal criticism. On the other hand, some scholars have approached the poem from the perspective of interest in an authorial intention dispute concerning whether the moral allegorical implications in the poem outweigh amoral narration in it. This study intends to take a more comprehensive view by focusing on its love narration, confessional narration, and advice narration, as well as its language and style, and adopts the method of poetic textual analysis in its historical context in order to carry out an examination of the "lust" and "lore" dichotomy in the poem. It is demonstrated that the principle of the "lust" and "lore" balance is followed throughout CA. In the love narration, the amoral "lust" and the rational "lore" reach a balance in terms of the effectiveness of expression with the assistance of the revelations of the lover's disguise. In the confessional narration, tales introduced as exempla are subject to the Seven Deadly Sins, but with the expressiveness of the tales, the "lust" of the tales and the "lore" of the Seven Deadly Sins reach a balance in terms of subjectivity; In the advice narration, the "lore" of the factually possible advice to the king is conveyed in the euphemistic way of delivering advice, by which the "lust" is revealed. The balance of the "lust" and "lore" is reached at the point of the difficulty in judging the practicality of the advice for a king as a genre of a Mirror for Princes. In addition, the language of the poem in the sense of its poetic form inclines to be in unified: this presents a formal and aesthetical "lust". The form of language and the "plain" style, which is enriched by the patriotic "lore", accommodate each other, consequently achieving a balance. The dissertation demonstrates that the lust and lore in the poem not only reflects the style and meaning of the poem, but also reveals an encyclopaedic method of composition. The poet uses literary fictitiousness and imaginativeness to make the poem understandable and attractive, and he also makes the poem morally enlightening to satisfy social demands. While reaching the goal of conveying the themes, the principle of the lust and lore balance in the poem helps to extend the vision, to create an interesting reading experience, and to enrich nuances relating to the literariness and morality of the work. Since the poem interacts with other texts, works, and perception of reality in the course of its thematic expression, the encyclopaedic way of composing by combining fiction and real events are the reasons for the balance of lust and lore in the poem. In conclusion, the dissertation indicates that the poet John Gower aims to convey a balance of "lust" and "lore". As a new style of work in his literary output, CA provides evidence for Gower's ability to write a secular work that also contains aesthetic qualities. The ethical and moral themes in the poem present critical views of the poet, reaffirming the "moral Gower" impression left by his previous works. The authorship of Gower as a poet is highlighted by the synthesis managed between the delightful "lust" and educating "lore" balance, so that Gower constantly keeps the narrative in an educating mode but not dull, and the tales catching but not misleading in conveying different themes. Delight and education are shared by other contemporary poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer, while the conservative balance of "lust" and "lore" by Gower is his major contribution to the literature of the period. [Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wu, Xiaoling. Published Wu, Xiaoling. "A Study of the 'Lust' and the 'Lore' in 'Confessio Amantis'." Diss. Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, 2019. Directed by Professor Hong Shen. (*N.B.: This dissertation is written in Chinese.) Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Study of the "Lust" and the "Lore" in "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Benson, C. David. Published Benson, C. David. Imagined Romes: The Ancient City and Its Stories in Middle English Literature. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Benson sets out to answer the question, "how did Middle English poets imagine the city of ancient Rome?" (1) His book is an attempt "to understand how each poet [John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and John Lydgate] makes use of the ancient city and its stories, reshaping and reimagining them for his own purposes." (7) "Gower," Benson states, "presents Rome as a model of civic governance--not because its leaders were always good, but because the wider community of Rome had the capacity to correct bad leaders and come together to repair damage done to the city." (8) Benson turns to consider Gower in his third chapter, "Civic Romans in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,'" noting that "Gower, Chaucer, Langland and Lydgate all focus on people rather than places, on ancient Romans rather than on the fabric of the city." (59) Gower's Rome is "almost always the ancient pagan city;" he "says little about its early Christian martyrs and has only a limited interest in the medieval city." (60) In general Benson's views very closely follow Winthrop Wetherbee's notion that central to Gower's idea of what Wetherbee has termed the "Rome world" (JGN 27.1) is "wise governance." Consequently, Benson claims that "Gower takes two general civic lessons from the ancient city: (1) leaders are strongest when they govern in harmony with the larger community, and (2) a good city is one that is able to sustain itself and its values even when a leader fails." (60) Benson develops these ideas in brief studies of "Mundus and Paulina," the "Policie" section of Book VII, wherein he highlights Maximin, Gaius Fabricius, Constantine, Trajan, Antonius, Pompey, the "Tale of Julius and the Poor Knight," the "Tale of the Emperor and the Masons," "Lucrece," and "Appius and Virginia" (63-74). In Constantine, especially (and interestingly) while he is a pagan ("Constantine and Sylvester") more than after his conversion, Benson finds a model for Gower's idea of a good ruler: "In addition to being a man of pity, the Confessio's pagan Constantine also practices three of the four points of policy that Genius in Book 7 says are required of a good ruler: truth . . . justice . . . and largesse." (75) Not surprisingly, Benson finds Gower's antithesis to Constantine in Boniface VIII, whose tale is told in Book II (77-78), and points out that Gower's critique of the Church of his time offered in the Prologue exhibits his belief that Boniface's corruption extended past his fall. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Imagined Romes: The Ancient City and Its Stories in Middle English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Ward sets out to show that neither Gower's inclusion of the "Religions of the World" section nor his discussion of rape and virginity in Book V, on Avarice, are digressions, as G.C. Macaulay (and many others) have believed, but rather that his "repudiations of Venus and rape in a discussion of avarice are appropriate and, indeed, necessary to his purpose in the "Confessio Amantis." The identification of avarice and fornication as idolatry in the Apostle Paul's warning to the Colossians and to the Ephesians . . . not only explains Genius's disavowal of the non-Christian gods, but is also essential both to the expansion of rapine to rape and the praise of virginity in contrast to Venus's lechery in book 5 of the 'Confessio Amantis'" (404). In a manner unique to the CA ("No other penitential work . . . links avarice, idolatry, and fornication together in such a sustained manner"), Gower "expands avarice from its limited definition as the desire to covet gold" which "ultimately leads the reader to understand idolatry as a practice that consists of treating gold, a lover, or a god as an idol. This progression works out the connection Paul makes in . . . Ephesians and Colossians: that fornicators and the avaricious are idolaters" (405). Ward asserts that in Paul's view, fornication, "with rape as the ultimate illicit act of sexual violation, is also revealed to be a rapacious form of avarice" (406). Gower presents Amans as "a sincere, even naïve, lover who respects the individual autonomy of his lady and her virtue"--in short, the opposite of the idolatrous, avaricious fornicator bent on "taking away another's possession or virtue" (406)--i.e., how Gower moves from avarice-inspired rapine to rape. Ward demonstrates the capaciousness of Gower's view of avarice by considering its social/legal damage (406-9), the profound social rot of adultery (409-11), the linkages of avarice with the Pauline conception of idolatry (411-14), and "Rape as stealing virtue and the debate about Venus" (414-22). Ward concludes that "by linking discussions of avarice, idolatry, and fornication in book 5, Gower relates the legal realities of "raptus" to penitential discourse. During a time of such great change in attitudes about the good and goods, Gower reiterates Paul's condemnation of the avaricious and fornicators to distinguish them from the legitimate lovers who engage in "kinde" love within the bounds of reason and virtue. Furthermore, he elucidates the dangers that avarice poses to communal flourishing and one's relationship with God" (422). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ward, Jessica. Published Ward, Jessica. "Avarice, Idolatry, and Fornication: The Connection between Genius's Discussions about Religion and Virginity in Book 5 of John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Studies in Philology 116 (2019): 401-22. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Avarice, Idolatry, and Fornication: The Connection between Genius's Discussions about Religion and Virginity in Book 5 of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 careful evidence and fine-grained arguments of Yeager's essay have the potential to help reshape understanding of "the shifting views and allegiances of Gower, the man" (34), particularly those that pertain to Thomas Arundel, his putative ownership of Oxford, All Souls College, MS 98, the Latin prose heading and the "Epistola" to Arundel that today open the manuscript, Gower's "Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia," and Gower's motives, intentions, and timing in composing and revising some of the contents of works included in the manuscript. Yeager opens by questioning the traditional understanding of All Souls MS 98 as a manuscript presented to Arundel and, by extension, evidence of Gower's "fulsome commitment" to Arundel and "ardent support" of Henry's usurpation (14). He reviews and confirms Malcolm Parkes' arguments that the manuscript was not an "authorial product" but "posthumously assembled by scribes" (17), affirming that the "Epistola" was not included in the All Souls MS 98 until nearly a century after Gower's death. Moreover, Yeager shows that the decoration of the manuscript, the "extensive emendations over erasures" in the All Souls version of the "Epistola," and the Latin prose heading or preface together suggest "strongly that the common conception of All Souls MS 98 is mistaken" (19). The emendations, in particular, indicate that the "Epistola" must have existed in two recensions at least, the All Souls version being a revision, prompting Yeager to raise questions about when and for what purpose the pre-revision "Epistola" was composed originally. He looks to the Latin prose preface and contextualizing history for reasons to believe that Gower composed the "Epistola" initially when Arundel was first appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Richard II, specifically designed to accompany :Viciorum pestilencia," a "new, showcase poem in 1397" (31). Characteristic of the argument in many ways is Yeager's explanation of a revision of an allusion to the Sermon on the Mount in the "Epistola" where, when describing the hiding of candlelight, Gower replaced the familiar and scriptural "sub modio" (under a basket) with "sub cincere" (under ashes), an indication, Yeager maintains, of Gower's new sense of a threat of "auto da fé," prompted by Arundel's "De heretic comburendo" and the "thirteen anti-Lollard Constitutions" of 1407 (25). The All Souls "Epistola," then, is less a "fulsome commitment" to Arundel than a propitiation of the archbishop who in his "second Canterbury tenure" was a "different, more dangerous man" in "different, far more dangerous times" (28), someone whom Gower may have had cause to fear because he had himself criticized the prelacy earlier in his career. Yeager's arguments do not depend wholly upon a single, revised word, of course, but this kind of subtlety characterizes his fresh and provocative way of looking at material in All Souls MS 98, material viewed in relation to the seriatim political climates in which it was produced, revised, and compiled. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Minor Latin Poetry Manuscripts and Textual Studies Published Yeager, R. F. "Gower's 'Epistle to Archbishop Arundel': The Evidence of Oxford, All Souls College, MS 98." In Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Professor Julia Boffey. Ed. Tamara Atkin and Jaclyn Rajsic (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 13-34. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 2019 Title A name given to the resource Gower's 'Epistle to Archbishop Arundel': The Evidence of Oxford, All Souls College, MS 98. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Cady states the major contention of her monograph early: "The focus of this book is on how dominant Western theories about the intrinsic nature of money and value are intimately tied to its beliefs about gender and gender difference. Put another way, gender ideology does not simply inform notions of money and value, it actually forms them. The roots of this isomorphic relationship can be traced to the late Middle Ages" (2). In support of this claim, she examines four works: the "Squire of Low Degree," Lydgate's "Fabula Duorum Mercatorum," Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale," and, from the "Confessio Amantis," the "Tale of Midas," in her third chapter, entitled "Midas's Touch: Common Property and Erotic economies in Book 5 of the Confessio Amantis." In point of fact, her remit is a whit broader, to compass the initial 746 lines of Book V. Having established that Aristotle in his "Politics" designated women as property and that "in the realm of a heterosexual economy, owners are male and property is female," she follows the development of this idea in the work of Tertullian, Augustine, and Aquinas as they wrestle with whether holding property privately is sinful. All eventually conclude that private property is a lamentable but necessary result of the Fall (90-96). Medieval jurisprudence translates the problem of ownership into legal terms (she cites John of Paris and John Fortescue), establishing that "labor is an investment that gives one the right to own a particular good" (96). All of this is preamble to her understanding of Gower's "complex and seemingly contradictory approach to avarice and the synergies and tensions between fiscal and erotic economies" (86) in Book V. The problem Amans faces in Book V--his wish for exclusive possession of his lady, which seems at first glance to dance on the knife-edge of Avarice, and likely make him culpable--has struck readers as a serious dilemma, given the obvious alternative: sharing her with the "'press' of men" that always surrounds her (98). Amans, however, takes a narrow view, denying any tinge of avarice, since he says he cares so little for gold, but only for his lady. Cady points out, however, that Amans "very quickly begins to fantasize about possessing his lover in language that echoes Genius's earlier depiction of avaricious enclosure and its tactile pleasures" (100). "Tactile pleasures" becomes key to Cady's analysis of the "Tale of Midas," for obvious reasons. (This analysis brings her to comment briefly on the tales of Tantalus, "Vulcan, Mars, and Venus," and "The King and His Steward's Wife"). Midas's joy in handling gold recalls Gower's description of the miser--a figure Amans treats in a questionably uncritical manner: "Amans's envy that a miser is able 'to grope and fiele al aboute" his "tresor" [a word Cady has linked to a woman's virginity (100)] whenever he wishes is decidedly disturbing, and hints at the dark violence bubbling underneath this erotic economy" (101). But for Cady Midas himself is less creepy than usurious--that is, by making gold without labor, but just with his touch, he "is perverting both the laws of nature and the laws of economy" (107). It has occurred to Amans, Cady notes, that his lady might be a usurer, in that she accrues benefits, i.e., his love, without labor (111-13)--an observation that requires her to range much farther than the 746 lines she staked out when she began. What she claims Amans "is articulating is a theory of give and take, a principle of exchange, that is at play whether one is talking about fiduciary or erotic matters" (112). This for Cady is the key to Gower's complicated Book V: Amans's love-service is treated as a form of labor that both in contemporary jurisprudence and natural law should earn reward--a reward that, ultimately, is woman's valorization. Her "tresor" has "no value if hoarded" (122); rather her worth derives from her sharing it, but only with one man. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cady, Diane. Published Cady, Diane. The Gender of Money in Middle English Literature: Value and Economy in Late Medieval England. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. ISBN 978-3-030-26260-0 978-3-030-26261-7. 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 Gender of Money in Middle English Literature: Value and Economy in Late Medieval England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 manuscript in which Mooney finds Hoccleve's hand is London, British Library, MS Egerton 913: "an incomplete copy, perhaps better classified as a fragment, containing in its present state only the Prologue and the first 1709 lines of Book I" (225). The text is copied in single-column, undecorated, on cheap paper, by three scribes. The first scribe ("Scribe A"), whom Mooney argues is Hoccleve, "is responsible for the greatest part of this copying: 1,835 lines of English plus the Latin verses and summaries in his portions of the manuscript, while Scribes B and C are responsible for only 205 and 777 lines of the English text, respectively, besides the Latin in their portions" (226). In claiming this copying for Hoccleve, Mooney disagrees directly with John Burrow and Ian Doyle, who note similarities to Hoccleve's hand elsewhere, but conclude that BL MS Egerton 913 is "certainly not by him" (229). Citing Doyle's later "mellowed" view in "private communication," and in support of her identification, Mooney provides a detailed analysis of the significant letter-forms (230-33). More speculatively, she offers three provocative hypotheses: 1) that Hoccleve, for a time in possession of an exemplar, "began to make a copy to keep as an exemplar for himself to make further copies to offer his patrons, resulting in the hastily copied Egerton fragment, principally written by himself, with the second hand filling the gap left by his copying from a faulty exemplar and the third adding a third quire (perhaps originally more) to carry on the copying" (233). 2) that the Egerton fragment, with its Ricardian opening, was copied from the same exemplar as Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.2, a manuscript lacking the Prologue and some lines following, which heretofore alone was agreed to contain Hoccleve's work; and 3) therefore "answers Macaulay's doubts about the wording of the Preface [sic] that would originally have stood at the beginning of Trinity" (234). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mooney, Linne R. Published Mooney, Linne R. "Thomas Hoccleve in Another 'Confessio Amantis' Manuscript." Journal of the Early Book Society 22 (2019): 225-38. 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 Thomas Hoccleve in Another "Confessio Amantis" Manuscript. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Nolan's abstract to her article conceivably provides the most succinct summary of what she has done: "This paper traces the emergence of style in English writing from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth century, performing textual analysis at both the macro and micro level by using computer software (Voyant; Stylo for R; AntConc) in tandem with traditional close reading. Two major databases were deployed: first, a collection of 279 Middle English digital texts. . . and second, the Middle English Glossarial Database created by Professor Larry D. Benson, which includes lemmatized texts of Chaucer and Gower's English corpora. The results show that the literary sense of 'style' is introduced to the English literary tradition by Chaucer, by way of Petrarch, and then more fully explored by Lydgate, especially in his "Fall of Princes." Using stylometry software (Stylo for R by M.Eder), the essay shows in a series of graphs how Chaucer and Gower's style are distinct from one another, using principal components analysis, cluster analysis, a bootstrap consensus tree, and network analysis; these graphs also show a clear distinction between Chaucer's verse and his prose . . . . the difference between Chaucer and Gower is related to these writers' explicit gestures toward 'high style' (Chaucer) and the 'plain style' (Gower). The final section of the paper . . . [shows] that Lydgate pioneered the notion of a writer's personal style, in contradistinction to the rhetorical levels of style (high and low) to which Chaucer and Gower refer" (33-34). It should be noted, parenthetically, that by relying on Benson's Glossarial Database for all of her examples, Nolan's conclusions apply only to the "Confessio Amantis"; Gower's French and Latin poetry, which exhibit a variety of styles, both "high" and "plain," are excluded from her study, with the exception of a brief mention in fn. 27 (49). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nolan, Maura. Published Nolan, Maura. "The Invention of Style." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 41 (2019): 33-71, A1-A12. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Invention of Style. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Rigby, Echard, and a team of twelve contributors explore Gower's "artistic refraction of contemporary affairs" (xxii), reading his poetry "in the context of his life [and] . . . the intellectual culture of the social, religious, and political controversies of his day" (xxiii), particularly the upheavals that hit England most directly: plague, the Uprising of 1381, Lollardy, the challenges of the Lords Appellant, and the deposition of Richard II. The tradition of estates satire and the framework of political ideology are recurrent concerns, as are relations with contemporary poets, especially Chaucer and Langland, and the relative chronology of Gower's works, his revisions of them, and contemporary events. The fourteen essays (plus a calendar of life records) are informed by consistent awareness of parallels between Gower's works, on the one hand, and chronicles and documentary records on the other, accompanied by careful attention to previous scholarship, judicious cross-referencing between the essays, a comprehensive index, and illustrative figures in color and black and white. The John Gower that emerges from the essays is not an unfamiliar one--a traditionalist moral poet--but one that is more nuanced and more ambivalent in his outlooks, perhaps, than is usually observed. His trilingualism is more taken for granted than directly explored, with sustained attention to "Mirour de l'Omme," "Vox Clamantis," "Cronica Tripertia," and the "minor" poems as well as "Confessio Amantis," the long-time favorite of critics. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rigby, Stephen H., ed., with Siân Echard. Published Rigby, Stephen H., ed., with Siân Echard. Historians on John Gower. Publications of the John Gower Society. Volume XII. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019. ISBN 97818433845379. 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 Historians on John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Carlin lists in chronological order the known Gower life records, including at least one not previously cited by scholars (10 March 1368; p. 7). She describes in calendar fashion the topic and nature of each record, identifies archival sources, and, where appropriate, cites critical discussions. The list is keyed to Carlin's expansive essay that follows in this volume ("Gower's Life," pp. 22-120), and the list indicates by asterisk or double asterisk records that mention a John Gower who may not be the poet, offering brief explanations. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlin, Martha. Published Carlin, Martha. "Chronology of Gower's Life Records." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 3-21. 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 Chronology of Gower's Life Records. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Carlin's discursive biography of Gower follows her list of life records which document the poet's legal and economic activities, enabling her to deduce his income as it varied over his lifetime, locate his residences and when he might have lived in them, and describe in "brief profiles" (pp. 62-79) his various associates and friends. She also explores at some length what can be deduced from Gower's tomb, his marriage to Agnes Groundolf, and his final "Testament." Notably, Carlin disagrees with previous biographers who consider Gower's marriage to be one of chaste convenience--old-age care, if you will--arguing that Gower's poem "Est Amor," his "Testament," Agnes's surname, and archival records of her activities after Gower's death indicate something more personal. Carlin also corrects discussions of Gower's tomb, describing accounts and errors of its reconstruction and placement in Southwark Cathedral (then St, Mary Ovary) and correcting earlier descriptions of his effigy. At the heart of Carlin's discussion, however, are the records themselves; she notes recurrently what they can tell us and what they cannot, punctuating her discussion with "perhaps," "probably," and "may be." Gower, she deduces generally, was a money lender as well as an investor in property, uninvolved as an agent for others, while he enlisted them in his own activities. The "archival record," she concludes, is "curiously lacking in evidence of conventional obligations and service, personal friendships [Chaucer excepted], family relationships [Agnes excepted], collegial ties, and confraternal or parochial affiliations" (109). A closing Appendix includes Carlin's transcriptions of two Latin Hustings deeds of 1366, and English translations of the lawsuit "Feriby v. Gower et al" (Guildford, 1394), and Gower's final "Testament." [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlin, Martha. Published Carlin, Martha. "Gower's Life." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 22-120. 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's Life. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Rigby describes each of Gower's major works and dates them and their revisions in light of references (overt and covert) to historical and political events, manuscript evidence, and scholarly discussion. "Mirour de l'Omme" is "difficult to date precisely" (124), although likely completed in whole or in part before the death of Edward III in 1377. "Vox Clamantis," particularly the "Visio" and Book 6, went through a "number of stages of composition" (126), largely in response to the 1381 Uprising and fluctuations in the reign of Richard II. "Confessio Amantis" was similarly revised over a lengthy period, and various revisions reflect the complications of Gower's Lancastrian associations and his relationship with Chaucer. G. C. Macaulay's theory of three recensions of CA has "remained extremely influential" (130), but "it may be best to conclude that we are actually confronted with one basic version . . . with two different dedications" (133). In any case, the CA manuscripts have been "central to debates about how the texts of Gower's works were produced" (135), and, although Gower's political affiliations before 1399 are not absolutely clear-cut, Rigby tells us, a number of poems were likely written after the deposition of Richard: "Rex Celi Deus," "O Recolende," "H. Aquile Pullus," "In Praise of Peace," and "Cronica Tripertita." Even in these, however, questions remain about relations between Gower's "moral and social outlook" and the impact of the deposition (138). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rigby. Stephen H. Published Rigby, Stephen H. "Gower's Works." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp.121-38. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Works. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Green gauges Gower's attitudes toward late-medieval English aristocratic actions and ideals. He describes socio-economic events that disturbed the traditional social hierarchy of the time, efforts to bolster that hierarchy, and Gower's reactions to the events and outcomes, comparing them recurrently with those of his literary contemporaries. He finds Gower's views on the aristocracy to be complex, ambiguous, and, at times, inconsistent. Summarizing the upheavals that followed from the Black Death and the French wars, Green comments that in "Mirour de l'Omme" Gower "decried revolt" even while he "shared the rebels disappointment with the impotence of the aristocracy" (147). In light of the development of a professional military and the subsequent reshaping of chivalry and its "cultural currency" (151), Green observes a "number of tensions in Gower's writing" (152). The poet, for example, cautions knights against seeking fame, but urges them to seek honor; his poems include a "range of views" on the "legitimacy of war," while his attitudes towards love in chivalry are "somewhat fluid" (159); his "position with regard to crusading, as with broader knightly duties, is not unambiguous" (161). The poet "abhorred violence for the most part," Green says, but he also praised those who "took up arms for the right reasons and with an awareness of the need of restraint" (164). Green discerns no "single, simplistic perspective on the subjects of chivalry and nobility" in Gower's works, but observes "a general direction of moral travel" (165) toward necessary but unspecific reform. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Green, David. Published Green, David. "Nobility and Chivalry." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 141-65. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Nobility and Chivalry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bailey describes the Black Death, Labor reforms, and the "Great Revolt of 1381," casting into relief the complexity of the traditional third estate and describing Gower's failure or unwillingness to acknowledge this complexity. The poet's works, Bailey shows, "convey little sense of engagement" with the "live issues" of "labour and poverty," expressing instead "nostalgia" for a lost golden age (182) and persistently lumping all laborers as pejorative "rustici" (172), "furious beasts" (184), or similar denigrations. Bailey explains the "chronic shortage of workers" and the "rising expectations and aspirations of lower orders," resulting from the national outbreaks of plague. Legal and political efforts to curb the mobility of workers and perceived idleness failed, generally, leading in intricate ways to the "varied and complex movement" (188) of the Uprising of 1381 which itself prompted a "debate that grappled with issues (such as justice and labour)" (190). Bailey charts opinions, actions, and reactions in parliamentary records, legal proceedings, and social commentaries, characterizing Gower's attitudes as reductive, with his depiction of the third estate in VC as "over-simplified and narrow" (187), although not unique. More generally, Bailey asserts, Gower was "a social conservative even by the standards of his own age," one who did not engage the "evolving debates on labour and poverty" (190). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bailey, Mark. Published Bailey, Mark. "The Peasants and the Great Revolt." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 167-90. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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 Peasants and the Great Revolt. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Davis focuses on the "post-Black Death commercial environment" (192) of the 1370s in England, summarizing the impact of the plague, the concerns of the Good Parliament of 1376, and the "role of John Northampton, who emerged as the standard bearer of civic complaints in the 1370s" (193), exploring how "some 400 lines" of Gower's "Mirour de l'Omme" offered "a conservative, popular programme for market reform, one in which conventional paradigms were weaved together with some of the pressing issues of his day" (193), particularly "issues of prices, quality, coin and the common good" (198). Gower's "specific iteration of sweet wines," for example (MO 26089–100), engages concerns that underlie the impeachment of three London merchants in the Good Parliament, Davis tells us, and his reference to the twenty-four "soldoiers" ("hirelings" of Fraud; MO 25957–68) connects with the Council of Aldermen, "a body of twenty-four individuals who were facing immense criticism at the time Gower was writing" (205–6). Elsewhere, Davis's claims tend to be general rather than specific, as when he observes that Northampton's "appeal to morality cut across sectional divides just as Gower's had" (208) or when he links the growing trend in London for harsh, public punishment of commercial deception to Gower's "strident language about punishment" (211) of dishonest bakers (MO 26173–96). Nonetheless, Davis marshals a range of details and perspectives that establish a "context for Gower's discussion of trade" (211). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Davis, James. Published Davis, James. "Towns and Trade." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 191-212. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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 Towns and Trade. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Musson describes the "legal profession" in Gower's lifetime, including the growth of various courts and proceedings. He explains the ambiguities and ranges of application of the labels "men of law," "gents de ley," "sergeant of the law," etc., and reviews evidence of Gower's purported legal training (including the sartorial evidence of the "striped sleeve"--"raye mance"--mentioned in MO 21772–5), concluding that there is "no unequivocal evidence which definitively confirms his status as a lawyer" (226) and that the "contention that he was a Chancery lawyer remains extremely conjectural" (229). Nevertheless, Gower's works display "familiarity with legal terminology and aspects of substantive law" (226), Musson explains, offering several examples of nuanced legal terminology missed by translators or critics of Gower's poetry. Further, Musson observes that Gower's knowledge at times extends beyond common law to canon law and Roman civic law, and, more importantly, that "his poetry engages in detail with issues relating to the conduct and role of men of law in the contemporary administration of justice" (229). Gower criticized legal rhetoric, obfuscatory language, and abuses of judicial power. In particular, Musson argues, Gower castigates the opportunistic "social climbing of men of law," made possible because of the rising "consumer demand for lawyers" and "new opportunities to purchase land" in the wake of outbreaks of the plague (237). Yet Gower "offered no practical reforms," Musson says, "other than a tax on lawyers' profits," relying essentially on the "personal integrity of men of law" (238). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Musson, Andrew. Published Musson, Anthony. "Men of Law." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 213-39. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower 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 Men of Law. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Lepine engages questions of Gower's religious orthodoxy by exploring what his depictions of and comments on the papacy, episcopate, and higher and lower clergies owe to the "stereotypes of medieval estates satire tradition," gauging how "radical was Gower in his criticisms of the Church" (244). Reviewing the scholarship and describing the historical context, Lepine finds that Gower's "examination of" the Church in MO and in VC "closely follows the structure and conventions of estates satire" (247); he is "particularly close to traditional estates satire" when discussing the "episcopate and the beneficed clergy" (248), even though his "knowledge of the higher clergy came in part from personal experience" (252), described by Lepine. Two groups that Gower criticizes, "unbeneficed priests and scholars," appear infrequently in estates satire, so he adapts "the genre to the conditions of his own time"(254) and, for the expanding "university-educated clergy" he "engages with contemporary reality" to update his views. Gower's "critique of the papacy," Lepine says, is "significantly more radical" (258), but--unlike John Wyclif--he stopped short of challenging the spiritual power of the papal office; he was "very far from being a Wycliffite" (265) in accepting Purgatory, prayers for the dead, indulgences, transubstantiation, the Latin Bible, and more. He "did not use his often scathing criticisms of the clergy to make a fundamental attack on the Church" and so "it is difficult" to place Gower's work within a late fourteenth-century 'new-anticlericalism'" (267). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lepine, David. Published Lepine, David. "The Papacy, Secular Clergy and Lollardy." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 243-69. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Papacy, Secular Clergy and Lollardy. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Heale opens his essay by noting the "paradox" that "Gower's writings about monasticism . . . cohere closely with the anticlerical discourses" of his day even though details of his "later life" and preparations for death "imply a strong regard for monastic practices and prayers" (271). Heale's paradox becomes an "apparent contradiction" that "cannot be readily reconciled" (287) near the end of his essay, where he observes that the "significance" of Gower's "monastic associations to his literary career is likely to remain enigmatic" (289). In short, Heale does not explain how or to what extent details of Gower's life affected his view of the regular clergy, but he does much to clarify how Gower's critiques of monastic life in MO and VC align with--and differ from--traditional estates satire and the critiques of his contemporaries. Generally, Gower echoes the "ubiquitous clichés" of estates satires, Heale explains, but the poet sometimes uses conventions in "a skilful and subtle manner" (280), adorning VC, for example, with some effective puns and "striking images" (277) and placing notable emphasis on monastic "waywardness" (276) not found in other writers. Gower was like Chaucer and Langland in leveling sharp criticism at monastic gluttony and lavish dress, Heale observes, but his focus on "social-climbing" is relatively unusual (281), his "lack of interest in female monasticism" is "distinct" (280), and he expressed little concern about monastic treatment of the poor. Unlike Wyclif, Gower "stopped short of advocating disendowment" of monasteries (284). He singled out "senior obedientiaries," while displaying "sympathy . . . with more junior inmates of religious houses" and showing "some understanding of the internal dynamics of monastic life" (286) beyond traditional complaints. Apart from disclosing such emphases, however, Heale is cautious about his framing concern, concluding that it "remains questionable whether Gower's writings on the religious orders can be used to shed light on his life and literature career "(289), [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Heale, Martin. Published Heale, Martin. "Monastic Life." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 271-89. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis 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 Monastic Life Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Röhrkasten traces the development of antifraternal criticism that rose in the University of Paris in the 1250s, came into sharp focus in 1255 in William of St. Amour's "De periculus novissimorum temporum," and gained a wider public in England in the 1350s when Richard FitzRalph's public preaching in London provoked a fiery outbreak of criticism centered on the "reopening of the question of Christ's poverty" (307). Internal debates within the Franciscan order (Conventuals versus Spirituals) and contentions between orders, Röhrkasten makes clear, contributed over time to a growing conflagration and he describes other flashpoints as well, laying the groundwork for an exhaustive survey of Gower's antifraternal comments in "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Vox Clamantis--a "formidable array of arguments against the mendicants" (314). The sheer capaciousness and inclusivity of this array, Röhrkasten tells us, leads to "disorderly presentation and lack of focus or direction for reform." Gower's "colourful collage of accusations" offers "a rather simplistic message": originally good, the mendicant orders "have deteriorated and become dangerous; they should reform and become good again" (317). Closing his survey with a description of mendicant presence in late-medieval England, Röhrkasten comments on possibilities and likelihoods of Gower's personal familiarity with friars and their communities. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Röhrkasten, Jens. Published Röhrkasten, Jens. "The Friars." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 291-320. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Friars. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Lewis's essay contributes to ongoing efforts to rewrite women into English literary history, exploring Gower's depictions of women in "Confessio Amantis" and female reception of the poem and related works. "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Vox Clamantis," Lewis tells us, offer "essentially one-dimensional illustrations" of aspects of "patriarchal or misogynistic discourse" (324), while women in CA are often "intelligent, astute and active in their own and others' interests" (327). Lewis aligns several female characters in CA (Petronella, Thais, and various queens, including Medea) with St. Katherine of Alexandria, the popular cult of whom Lewis documented in a book-length study published in 2000. St. Katherine's popularity enables Lewis to aver that female readers of CA "would have spotted the similarities between her virtues and intelligence" (331) and those of Gower's characters. Lewis attends particularly to how Gower's characters may have appealed to women of elite status, particularly Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Elizabeth Woodville, and Margaret Beaufort--women "who played a role in later medieval English politics" (350) and whose literary interests have been well documented through their ownership of or associations with manuscripts of CA and similar texts. In this way, Lewis includes CA in a "wider 'syllabus' of political and courtly instruction owned by high status women" (346) of the fifteenth century. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lewis, Katherine J. Published Lewis, Katherine J. "Women and Power." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 323-50. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and LIterary Relations Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women and Power. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Explaining that questions of Richard II's status as a boy and as a man were central to politics of late-medieval England, Fletcher assesses Gower's views on related political concerns through examination of his diction. Using computer analysis (textométrie) of Gower's masculine lexicon ("man," "manly," "manhood," etc.), Fletcher explores Gower's emphases in light of wider Middle English usage and then examines nuances of the denotations and connotations of the terms (especially "manhood") in Book I of "Confessio Amantis" and in the "Tale of Horestes," locating it in the structural "trajectory" (371) of Book III. Mining the narratives of Book I, Fletcher shows that Gower asserts "the superiority of moral virtue over the social dictates of manhood" (369), and although Gower does not link the "Tale of Horestes" to Richard's struggles in the 1380s, it "could have," Fletcher says, "provided Gower with a means of defending Richard in the last two years of his reign" (374). Revisions to CA and especially the "Cronica Tripertita," Fletcher argues, attribute Richard's deposition to his lack of the "fundamental qualities of manhood" (376)--moral vigor and justice--but they leave unclear how Gower's approved "kind of manhood . . . might be applied to concrete social and political practice" (378). Fletcher concludes that the "complexity" of the "framing structures" of CA and the "sheer variety" of its narrative materials enabled Gower both "to support and to condemn precisely the same line of action" (378). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fletcher, Christopher. Published Fletcher, Christopher. "Masculinity." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 351-78. Gower Subject Biography of Gower 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 Masculinity. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Rigby replaces the traditional distinction between absolutist and constitutional theories of kingship with a parallel but a somewhat more discursive distinction between "royal" and "political" kingship theories (394). Exploring "the nature of Gower's political views" (383) in light of this spectrum, Rigby surveys the fundamental concern in Gower's works with the necessity of moral virtue in a king, and clarifies notions of just governmental action in late-medieval England, particularly focused on ideas of tyranny, treason, uses of violence, the proper role of counsel, and the voice of the people. Rigby reviews recurrent, even persistent, tensions between the forms of political theory and instances of political action during Gower's life and in his works, and he rejects arguments that Gower was inconsistent or opportunistic when shifting loyalty to Henry after Richard's deposition. The "poet's view that divine providence could employ human agency to strike down evil tyrants," Rigby argues, "had always possessed the potential to be used in support of a 'political' conception of the king's relationship with his subjects." After the deposition and particularly in "Cronica Tripertita," Gower drew upon this "potential" and he "welcomed the fact that Henry Bolingbroke had replaced Richard II on the throne . . . as part of the workings of divine providence." In Rigby's argument, the "tractability of Gower's political principles and language" (424) is of a piece with the subtleties of late-medieval political theory and the flexibility of their applications, obviating censure of the poet as an opportunist. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rigby, Stephen H. Published Rigby, Stephen H. "Political Theory." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 381-424. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Cronica Tripertita Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Political Theory. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bennett's opens with a succinct and accurate summary of what his essay accomplishes: "This chapter reassesses Gower's views on Richard's reign by examining the poet's writings in the context of his background in Kent, his social circle and political connections, the politics of Richard's reign, and contemporary perceptions of his rule. Key issues here are Gower's role as mentor to royalty in his letter to Richard in "Vox Clamantis" ["Epistola ad regem"]; the dating of the critical comments about the king which Gower added to this text; Gower's stance in relation to the cause of the Appellants in 1387-88; the dating and significance of the changes which Gower made to the "Confessio Amantis," particularly the change of the dedication from Richard to Henry; the date[s] of the composition of the three parts of the "Cronica Tripertita," in which Gower wrote an account of Richard's misrule, his tyranny and overthrow; and the misleading nature of modern representations of Gower as a 'Lancastrian propagandist'" (425). Bennett accomplishes all this and more with impressive specificity and detail; he offers clear and subtle descriptions of political events, fresh perspectives on aspects of Gower's life and literature, and persuasive arguments for revising the traditional dating of his works. He clarifies the importance of Gower's affiliations with Sir John Cobham and Arnold Savage and his loyalty to the Lords Appellant; he argues that Gower's works reflect consistent attitudes and studied choices--at least when choice was possible available amidst the shifting loci of political power that held sway during events that led up to and through Richard's deposition. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bennett, Michael. Published Bennett, Michael. "Gower, Richard II and Henry IV." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 425-88. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Cronica Tripertita Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower, Richard II and Henry IV. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Falk surveys commentary on Gower's knowledge of medieval sciences and magic, particularly astronomy and astrology, accepting traditional arguments that in Book VII of "Confessio Amantis" Gower was widely influenced by "encyclopaedic sources" such as the pseudo-Aristotelian "Secretum secretorum" and Brunetto Latini's "Li Livres dou Tresor," but exploring further Gower's familiarity with "lesser known sources" (491), particularly two texts: the "Benedictum sit nomen Domini," an example of the "broad corpus of Latin writings which may be called Alchandreana" (504), and the "Tractatus Enoch," a text as much concerned with magic as science. Both texts have been previously identified in discussions of Gower's sources, but Falk studies details shared between CA and these texts in order to explore the "true level of Gower's scientific expertise" (514), observing the poet's relative lack of interest in scientific instruments, his relatively precise use of numbers, and his interest in "diagrammatic illustrations," which "may have drawn the poet's eye down" to scientific texts (525). Falk thinks that the "Benedictum" is the source of Gower's lists of stars in CA, but similarities with the "Benedictum" do not allow us to gauge Gower's "theoretical understanding" of lunar mansions, and his "conflation of signs and constellations" indicate that he in part misunderstood his source (515). Gower's use of the "Tractatus Enoch," Falk tells us, helps to explain citations of Nectanabus and Hermes in CA and perhaps indicates Gower's familiarity with "image magic"--a "fashionable genre of learned magic" (521) related to astronomy. Drawing on the "Tractatus" or something like it, Gower "included "elements of both astrology and image magic in his account of astronomy" in CA, but he also distinguished "between the people who practise" these skills, thereby, Falk explains, treading a "reasonably straight and careful path" between valid science and immoral practice (524), while pursuing the goal of educating his readers. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Falk, Seb. Published Falk, Seb. "Natural Sciences." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 491-525. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Natural Sciences. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Sáez-Hidalgo and Yeager identify three purposes of their essay: first, "to consider Berthelette's Gower afresh and to suggest several ways in which his two editions" of "Confessio Amantis," 1532 and 1554, "at once reflect their times and reveal Berthelette's unusual subtlety both as a designer of books and as a probable Roman Catholic opposed to Henry's break with the Roman Church"; second, to describe a copy of the 1554 edition previously "unknown to scholars," purchased from private ownership in 2017 by the Rossell Hope Robbins Library at the University of Rochester; and third, to investigate evidence of reading of the Robbins copy (signatures and bookplates, marginalia, and underlinings) that may indicate it is a "potentially 'Catholic book'" (113-14)--a fuzzy notion in this context that the authors duly acknowledge as such by enclosing the phrase in parentheses throughout the essay. What it meant to be Catholic in 1532, two years before Henry's break with Rome, differed from what it meant in 1554 after Mary had reinstated Catholicism in England, even though the small changes Berthelette made between his two editions can perhaps be seen to reflect the nuances evolving in religious discourses of the period as well as the bibliographical and historical contexts that Sáez-Hidalgo and Yeager identify. Berthelette himself may well have been Catholic in one sense or another; Sáez-Hidalgo and Yeager provide several "circumstantial clues" (130) that he was, although they then hazard circularity in their larger argument by suggesting that "the best evidence [of him being Roman Catholic] may in fact be the two editions he produced" of CA (130). Being Catholic also differed later in the sixteenth and in the seventeenth centuries when readers left their marks in the Robbins Library volume, and Sáez-Hidalgo and Yeager identify two prominent owners of the Robbins volume, Sir Martin Bowes, goldsmith, director of the London mint and Lord Mayor, and Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord High Treasurer under Charles II, as Catholic, providing brief biographies and assessing how and why the volume may have appealed to them. In short, the phrase "Catholic book" may be useful in book history only as a catch-much term, much less useful than are the more specific information and interpretations offered here. The essay provides detailed analytic data about the Robbins volume; useful perspective on Berthelette's humanist, religious, political, and financial concerns in producing his two editions; a comparison of aspects of Berthelette's 1532 edition with those of William Thynne's "Workes of Chaucer" published only months earlier (particularly their title pages and biographical information); a suggestive reading of Berthelette's account of the tablet near Gower's tomb; and an engaging account of how one book may have been planned, produced, intended, used, and treasured over several hundred years. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana. Yeager, R. F. Published Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, and R. F. Yeager. "Catholic (?) Printer, Catholic (?) Owners: The Robbins Library Berthelette Confessio Amantis (1554)." Journal of the Early Book Society 22 (2019): 114-48; 8 b&w figs. 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 Catholic (?) Printer, Catholic (?) Owners: The Robbins Library Berthelette "Confessio Amantis" (1554). Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Janecek posits that Gower's consistent use of masculine pronouns in "Iphis and Iante" in reference to Iphis creates a "subversive trans narrative that revolts against cisnormative conceptions of transness." Gower's tale "challenges the role of trauma in shaping not only queer identity, but specifically trans identity." Because Gower's tale lacks the trauma present in Ovid's original, we may read this as a trans narrative rather than an erasure of lesbian identity. Janecek differentiates how gender works for Iphis in both versions of the tale: in Ovid's version, gender is a vehicle to act on desire whereas in Gower it operates irrespective of desire. Rather than label characters in a text, queer theory aims "to analyze social and historical forces and cues that encourage queer readings." Janecek argues that the key difference between Ovid's and Gower's depictions of Iphis is reducible to the relationship between identity and body. For Ovid, gender is discovered through the body; for Gower, gender is an internal part of one's nature. In Gower's version, Iphis is not an incomplete man; rather, the transformation that he undergoes confirms his masculine identity. As Janecek puts it, "Gower's Iphis is born a son, accepted as a son, and in the end, his core identity becomes confirmed." Janecek continues then to engage M. W. Bychowski's work on this same tale at some length, referencing definitions from the "Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" as well as Judith Butler's "Undoing Gender." Janecek argues against Bychowski's argument that Iphis needs to exhibit gender dysphoria to be diagnosed as trans and to then achieve any sense of agency, concluding that Gower's tale indeed emphasizes Iphis's agency in expressing his identity as a trans child without trauma. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Janecek, C. Published Janecek, C. "Undiagnosing Iphis: How the Lack of Trauma in John Gower's 'Iphis And Iante' Reinforces a Subversive Trans Narrative." Accessus 5.1 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Undiagnosing Iphis: How the Lack of Trauma in John Gower's "Iphis And Iante" Reinforces a Subversive Trans Narrative. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Zweers "aims to provide a more complete insight into Gower's narrative construction of the 'Confessio' and the manuscript version of the 'Pantheon' that Gower most likely used as his guide." Beyond the "obvious debt" in Gower's reference to this text, Zweers points out the "strong thematic and stylistic similarities to Godfrey's work throughout Book VIII." Attempting to overcome any resistance to claims of Gower's use of "Pantheon," Zweers traces the critical reception of this textual connection as well as the reception history of "Pantheon." Gower acknowledges Godfrey's "auctoritas" at the beginning of the "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre," claims Zweers, before explaining how this tale about incest actually was crucial to ending CA through comparison and source study. Moving from this comparison, Zweers shows further thematic relationships between "Pantheon" and Book VIII of CA. She argues that it is a more fitting source for CA than the more commonly recognized source, "Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri." Zweers then systematically dissects Gower's text to show its indebtedness to Godfrey's "Pantheon." [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Zweers, Thari L. Published Zweers, Thari L. "Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon and John Gower's Confessio Amantis: The Story of Apollonius Retold." Accessus 5.1 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Godfrey of Viterbo's "Pantheon" and John Gower's "Confessio Amantis": The Story of Apollonius Retold Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 issue of Accessus is made up of shorter essays focusing on various works of John Gower. These essays were developed from conference presentations on panels sponsored by The Gower Project or The John Gower Society at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2018-19 and at the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association in 2019. "Accessus" editors note in their introduction that "Authors were invited to submit moderately expanded versions of their presentations (along with bibliography and footnotes) for conversion into the more durable and transmittable form that electronic publication offers." Given the format, in place of the full summaries normally provided for each essay, a brief synopsis is supplied. Search for "Accessus 5.2 (2019)" [without the quotation marks]. Published "Gower Shorts." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Author/Editor Author/Editor Salisbury, Eve, and Georgiana Donavin. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Shorts. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Coleman examines Gower's use of images in his works, asserting that he likely designed them himself. She focuses specifically on the famous archer illustration from the beginning of "Vox Clamantis," suggesting Gower engages a number of fourteenth-century motifs to underscore the arguments he presents in the text of VC. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Coleman, Joyce. Published Coleman, Joyce. "Global Gower: The Archer Aiming at the World." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. 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 Global Gower: The Archer Aiming at the World. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Ladd addresses what he sees as Gower's shift in CA from the overt estates satire of his earlier works into a more general critique of humankind's susceptibility to "the sins of materialism and avarice" by exploring examples in numerous tales to conclude that Gower demonstrates how economic interactions must be "part of how we all get along." [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ladd, Roger A. Published Ladd, Roger A. "'Als wel the lord as the schepherde, He broghte hem alle in good accord': Harmonious Materialism in the Confessio Amantis." Accessus 5.2 (2019): 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 "Als wel the lord as the schepherde, He broghte hem alle in good accord:: Harmonious Materialism in the "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 argues for Gower's concern with darkness and deceit in regard to Avarice, demonstrating the various ways in which we might interpret blindness and illustrating the economic repercussions of Covetousness in the economic settings of fourteenth-century England. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig E. Published Bertolet, Craig E. "Dark Money: Gower, Echo, and 'Blinde Avarice'." Accessus 5.2 (2019): 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 Dark Money: Gower, Echo, and "Blinde Avarice." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Rogers explores how readers' assumption of Gower's old age impacts our understanding of his works, but rather than focusing on Gower's appearance, Rogers attends to the rhetorical positioning of Gower's voice as old, arguing for Gower's use of his old voice as a type of authority that conveys wisdom and sound advice. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rogers, Will. Published Rogers, Will. "One Voice, Ancient and Resigned." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Biography of Gower 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 One Voice, Ancient and Resigned. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Wolfer engages Gower's revision of Narcissus in "Confessio Amantis" via queer temporality, suggesting "surquiderie" is itself a time of queer temporality and demonstrating how Narcissus disrupts the historiography of heteronormativity. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wolfer, Lacey M. Published Wolfer, Lacey M. "Narcissus in Queer Time." Accessus 5.2 (2019): 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 Narcissus in Queer Time. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Schutz focuses on the role of statuary in CA, suggesting that only words are stable signs and highlighting the paradox of the instability of the statue as sign. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schutz, Andrea. Published Schutz, Andrea. "Standing in the Dark: Sloth and Stability, Paralysis and Perseverance in Book IV of "Confessio Amantis. " Accessus 5.2 (2019): 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 Standing in the Dark: Sloth and Stability, Paralysis and Perseverance in Book IV of "Confessio Amantis. " Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 authors provide a distant reading via digital humanities which they claim provides a fresh perspective on a familiar text, and argue for the potentially productive readings made possible by putting texts through such computationally assisted analysis. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor McShane, Kara L., and Alvin Grissom II. Published McShane, Kara L. McShane, and Alvin Grissom II. "Gower as Data: Exploring the Application of Machine Learning to Gower's Middle English Corpus." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower as Data: Exploring the Application of Machine Learning to Gower's Middle English Corpus. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Hamaguchi, Keiko. Published Hamaguchi, Keiko. "The Cultural Otherness of Custance as a Foreign Woman in the Man of Law's Tale." Chaucer Review 54 (2019): 411-40. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review As Hamaguchi states in her abstract, her article "explores how Chaucer highlights the cultural otherness of Custance as a foreign woman in England" . . . , how "Custance as the cultural other can be associated with real, historical foreign women . . . , and how aggression and xenophobia toward Custance" reflect similar, perhaps identical, late-medieval English attitudes toward foreign women--attitudes Chaucer sought to undermine through sympathy for Custance (411). At many points in her argument Hamaguchi compares Custance with the Constance figures in Gower's and Nicolas Trivet's versions of the story to show how Chaucer "accentuates her cultural otherness" (418) and how he consistently underscores this otherness by making her more vulnerable and helpless than either Gower's or Trivet's protagonist, often treated together here. Hamaguchi examines some dozen or more supporting details that occur in Chaucer but not the other two accounts, observing, for example, that Chaucer alone "focuses on [Custance's] unhappiness" (415) at leaving Rome, that Chaucer "accentuates her cultural otherness" through mention of "specific place names" during her journeys, and that only in Chaucer "does the foreignness of Custance's language appear" (418)--addressing some dozen differences overall. In only two instances does Hamaguchi address concerns and details that are not in Chaucer but are in Gower and Trivet: "love is an element" (427) in the latter accounts of marriage to the Anglo-Saxon king and, when confronted by a seducer in these accounts, she is "guileful" when thwarting her seduction through deception (435). Otherwise, Hamaguchi, shows, Chaucer's details emphasize the unhappiness and vulnerability of being a foreign woman, and she aligns Constance's condition with foreign women in Chaucer's world--particularly Anne of Bohemia, Isabella of France, and Katherine Swynford--by identifying historical parallels. There is little analysis here of Gower's or Trivet's narratives, but Hamaguchi's tally of details found exclusively in Chaucer is significant. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] 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 Cultural Otherness of Custance as a Foreign Woman in the Man of Law's Tale. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 41 pages without illustrations, Stone's argument is lengthy, complex, and difficult to summarize succinctly. He offers an attempt in his attached abstract: "This article triangulates John Gower's revisions to the 'Mirour de l'Omme' and 'Vox Clamantis,' William Langland's revisions to 'Piers Plowman,' and English responses to the Western Schism. The Schism forced Gower to rework portions of the 'Mirour' and 'Vox,' and influenced Langland's depiction of the papacy in the B-text of 'Piers.' Recovering Gower's and Langland's representations of the Schism not only brings these two poets into direct dialogue, but it also illuminates an undertheorized set of religious, political, and imaginative discourses centered on the institutional nature and shape of the church . . . . scholars [should] understand these discourses as a loose but recognizable 'vernacular ecclesiology' common to both the poetical works of Langland and Gower as well as [a] much broader spectrum of later medieval literature." As this abstract suggests, in addition to substantial material providing background to the Schism (clearly on the assumption that most know little about it), its most salient points center around dating those passages in the MO, VC, (and incidentally the CA and "In Praise of Peace") and "Piers" which can be thought to address the Schism--not ever easy, since in no case do Gower and Langland confront it directly. For Gowerians, perhaps Stone's most enduring effort is tracing what he argues were parallel arcs of Gower's and Langland's thinking regarding "ecclesiology" (which Stone defines, quoting Paul Avis, as "the comparative, critical, and constructive study of the dominant paradigms of the church's identity" [101]), prompted by the Schism: "By 1377, Gower and Langland had, like many of their contemporaries, had already begun to think about the spiritual, political, and aesthetic consequences of ecclesia" (99). In 1378, the Schism caused Gower to revise the MO and the "A-text" (borrowing from Maria Wickert) of the VC, which "focused on the sins of the Avignonese papacy." With the Schism in 1378, which "c. September 1378-summer 1379" Gower configured "as a monstrous new birth in the 'Mirour'" (94). VC B1 adjusts to critique the chaos during "the torrid first few years of the Schism while B2 registers the situation after Despenser's Crusade" (95). The CA's remarks on the Schism reflect the period "between Despenser's Crusade and the death of Clement VII in 1394" (95); and in "In Praise of Peace" he "exhorts the Henrician regime to support inchoate conciliar efforts to end the Schism" (95). Stone finds Langland's revisions to "Piers" at B.19-20/C.21-22 obeying a similar chronology in pursuit of a remarkably similar reaction to the Schism (95-101). In a coda, he opines about how thinking through an "English ecclesiology" might benefit analyses of late medieval literary work. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stone, Zachary E. Published Stone, Zachary E. "Towards a Vernacular Ecclesiology: Revising the Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Piers Plowman During the Western Schism." Yearbook of Langland Studies 33 (2019): 69-110. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Towards a Vernacular Ecclesiology: Revising the "Mirour de l'Omme," "Vox Clamantis," and "Piers Plowman" During the Western Schism Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Zuraikat and Rawashdeh compare Ovid's narrative of Acteon, embedded in the larger history of Cadmus and his house ("Metamorphoses III), to Gower's "Tale of Acteon" (CA, I.333-87). They present Gower's project as "a blend of 'narration' and 'focalization', where 'narration' is the telling of a story that simultaneously respects the needs and enlists the cooperation of its audience and 'focalization' is the submission of (potentially limitless) narrative information to a perspectival filter" (235). Thus they find that Gower is "aware of the great difference between Confessio Amantis's moral context and "Metamorphoses'" mythological one." Consequently, he "uses his borrowed material according to his poem's moral purpose. He does not passively paraphrase his classical sources; rather, he innovatively rewrites them in light of the Confessio's moral texture" (235). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Zuraikat, Malek J. Rawashdeh, Faisel I. Published Zuraikat, Malek J., and Faisal I. Rawashdeh. "John Gower's Moral Adaptation of Ovid's 'Tale of Acteon'." International Journal of Arabic-English Studies 19 (2019): 127-38. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Moral Adaptation of Ovid's "Tale of Acteon." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bychowski notes that the goal of "Confessio Amantis" is "to bring those excluded and isolated by the presumptions of the world, especially anyone in a wood of suicide, into meaningful and life-giving community discourse" (209). Hence, the CA and the confessional genre of poetry writ large "may be considered a literary and social form by which trans persons would be known and controlled as well as how trans lives came to embody and resist these discursive structures of genre and gender" (209). Narcissus, in particular, is the representative of the trans community in Gower's poem and is the focus of the four sections of the essay: "The Wód of Suicide," "The 'Ymage' of the Nymphs," "The Wonder Hot Day," and "Flowers in Winter." Each section centers on a Middle English keyword: "wód," "ymage," "condiciŏun," and "otherwhiles." In "The Wód of Suicide," Bychowski asserts that Gower's Confessio Amantis has a "necropolitical frame"--that confession is what brings Gower back from the brink of death as he despairs his isolation in a wood of suicide (219). She illustrates the ambiguity of the word "wood" in Middle English, concluding the "wód" is confession's public form, and that the creation of alternative "wóds" allows a space for reclamation. In "Ymage," Bychowski writes, through framing, "'The Tale of Narcissus' turns social presumptions into confessions that reveal certain truths while eschewing others" (228). "Ymage" in this tale sets in sharp relief the social construction of gender: Narcissus recognizes themself as a woman but has been taught not to see themself that way. For Bychowski, precariousness rather than personal vanity is the "condiciŏun" for Gower's iteration of "The Tale of Narcissus": their division from women as a result of patriarchy, the well as potentially a place of reconditioning in which Narcissus can see a feminine self without judgment. Finally, in "Flowers in Winter," Bychowski defines "otherwhiles" as "alternative times and events that play out again and again" and "time[s] beyond rest" (241-42). The slow death of suicide is highlighted in the context of these "otherwhiles," and in so doing, Gower provides a space in which to contemplate liveable and bright trans futures. The essay establishes both significant theoretical terminology (e.g., "trans necropolitics") and social positioning (e.g., "By allowing medieval confession to speak together with trans theory, readers can better see that cultural genealogies of anti-trans sentiment continue to run in the blood of patriarchies and some feminist movements, so-called 'Trans-exclusive Radical Feminists' (TERF), even as these systems of presumption and exclusion take different forms in medieval and post-medieval eras" (216). [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bychowski, M. W. Published Medieval Feminist Forum 55 (2019): 207-48. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Necropolitics of Narcissus: Confessions of Transgender Suicide in the Middle Ages. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The volume in which this essay appears is devoted to medieval and Early Modern authors' engagement with Ovid's version of Iphis and Ianthe, and Lochrie's is the only essay that treats Gower's use of the tale. Lochrie argues that Gower's version is "a tale that, in refusing to solve its riddles or provide the interpretive wherewithal of its gloss, creates the possibility for another kind of change--a metamorphosis, if you will, in the very moral and epistemological rubrics with which we read gender, sex and bodies" (93-94). Lochrie begins by exploring the "riddles" in Ovid's version, primarily that Iphis's embodiment as a man solves the "monstrous" riddle of love reflected in the same-sex relationship of Iphis and Ianthe. Turning to Gower's retelling of the tale, Lochrie suggests Ovid's riddles are replaced with a set of riddles defined by ambiguity and which frustrate the reader's attempts at certainty and resolution, which itself embodies the queer politics of the story. For example, when Gower's couple "use / Thing which to hem was al unknowe) (4.486-7), Lochrie considers the linguistic ambiguity of what that "thing" may be (from a reference to practice--to do things or engage in an activity--to a physical object or prosthetic phallus). Gower, Lochrie posits, "opens up a space of opaqueness courtesy of Nature and the desires of Iphis and Iante--a space that seems deliberately resistant to sexual epistemology" (86). Lochrie then turns to an exploration of the Latin gloss located at the beginning of the tale, and its "deliberate misprision of the Middle English story" (88). For Lochrie, Ovid's conundrum about how two women can physically love each other is replaced, in Gower, with a "more shadowy riddle about the position this physical love between women occupies with respect to nature" (90). This essay analyses the complicated and conflicting nonheteronormative aspects of Gower's tale. The collection in which this appears also includes, in Appendix B (286-8), Lochrie's translation of Gower's tale, which will undoubtedly contribute to greater inclusion of Gower's version in courses in which ME is not required and in courses more widely devoted to gender and sexuality. [BWG. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lochrie, Karma. Published In Ovidian Transversions: 'Iphis and Ianthe', 1300-1650, ed. Valerie Traub, Patricia Badir, and Peggy McCracken. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019), pp. 80-98. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Riddles in "Iphis and Iante." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Beginning in the twelfth century and ending in the early fifteenth, Stone sets out to trace "two distinct corpora of Alexander narratives," one derived from "vulgate histories" and the other, full of "fantastic anecdotes about Alexander's childhood and campaigns," from the third-century text known as Pseudo-Callisthenes (1). As his title suggests, his focus is England, although with detours into the tradition as it developed in France. Thomas of Kent--about whom nothing is known--wrote the Anglo-Norman "Roman de toute chevalerie" in the 1170s. While there are strong suggestions that the poem had a wide audience both insular and continental, only three manuscripts survive, are later (mid-thirteenth and two fourteenth), and all present significant textual challenges. "Gower . . . considered the [poem] still to be an authoritative source-text on Alexander, one that might be read as a narrative reflective of the dangers that threaten to undermine any king's reign, and an attractive Anglo-Norman Alexander romance in the face of three centuries of French competition" (172). From Thomas Gower borrowed into the CA the narratives of Nectanabus (VI.1789-2366), Diogenes (III. 1201-1330), the pirate (III. 2363-437), and Dindimus (V. 1453-96). Stone argues that Gower found Alexander to be "a criminal who is justly killed for his misdeeds"--allowing his desire for conquest and glory to drive him into endless wars (180). In this view Gower seems to concur with the scribe/commentator of Durham, Cathedral Library, MS C.IV.27B, copied ca. 1350. Stone does not claim, however, that this manuscript was Gower's source. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stone, Charles Russell. Published Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. 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 "Roman de toute chevalerie": Reading Alexander Romance in Late Medieval England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Swenson's chapter works to bridge animal studies and disability studies, two theoretical approaches that are often seen as at odds, given the historical conflation between the disabled body and the animal body as a means to discriminate against disabled bodies--that is, both have often been read as below acceptable norms of full humanity. Swenson reads a similar logic at work in Gower's "Vox Clamantis," particularly the "Visio Anglie," where hierarchies of human value assume the conflation of nobility and ability, most especially in the "Visio"'s presentation of peasants as "beasts irrational." Careful attention to Gower's conflation of these categories, then, points to the needs to attend to nonlinguistic bodies differently. For Gower, the natural order encodes also human hierarchies, along with that of human over animal. Only nobility are fully human in Gower's reckoning, with the commons introduced as "uncounted monsters" even before any physical transformation occurs. The "Visio" oscillates between human and animal, a feature typical of many representations of individuals with cognitive disabilities. Yet in calling readers to behold the peasants/animals who seek acceptance of their humanity, Gower introduces the possibility that this representation may shock readers into seeing new ways of being. Though the "Visio"'s animals are, with one exception, nonlinguistic, it is clear to the narrator that their din means something, and thus his attempts to listen (as well as the reader's) makes space for alternative embodied rhetorics. Thus, Swenson argues, despite Gower's conservative views and class allegiances, the "Visio" provides a perhaps surprising model for both disability and animal studies. [KMcS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Swenson, Haylie. Published In Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World, ed. Richard H. Godden et al. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 163-80. 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 Attending to "Beasts Irrational" in Gower's "Visio Anglie." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower is one of three canonical authors (along with Chaucer and Langland) to receive his own chapter in this introduction to law and literature in medieval England. Yeager contrasts Gower's literary criticisms of the legal estate with his personal interactions with the law. He notes that the famous reference to Gower wearing "rayed sleeves" comes at the end of a section on friars and likely suggests "an ecclesiastical allusion, not a legal one" (149). Yeager further argues that when Chaucer made Gower his attorney in 1378, it may have been because of Gower's frequent buying and selling of property, "not unlike the way an experienced real-estate agent today understands the legal ins and outs of property purchases and sales" (153). Gower's involvement with the law is also seen in his detailed last will: "in 1408, when Gower died, written will were relatively unusual" (150). Nevertheless, Gower's criticism of legal practitioners suggests that he was not a lawyer himself (153). Yeager goes on to demonstrate that Gower's work presents a rich and varied treatment of legal themes. Gower has a broad understanding of the types of law, ranging from natural law and the law of charity to more concrete positive law. He also links the concept of justice with a constellation of similar virtues (equity, love, grace, mercy, pity, etc.). In fact, Gower's theological view of justice (which is separate from the law proper) is deeply Augustinian (155-56). It is also political, as Gower rebukes Richard II in the "Cronica Tripertita" for shaping the law to suit his own needs (156). By contrast, Henry IV is entirely associated with justice: "In the Cronica the most common adjectives describing Henry and each of his initial acts as new monarch are 'iustus' and 'pius'" (156). Despite his support for Henry IV, Gower is not an absolutist or monarchist. Neither is he strictly a parliamentarian or constitutionalist. Gower advocates for good counsel and he recognizes that the king's authority stems from the law, but he also maintains that only the king can "legitimate the law by ensuring its equitable application" (159). [CvD. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature, ed. Candace Barrington and Sebastian Sobecki. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019), pp. 148-66. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Cronica Tripertita Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Anderson's subject is the so-called "Visio Anglie," Book I of the "Vox Clamantis" in most known manuscripts. He closes his essay this way: "For his dreamer, the presence of the moment is visceral and physical. In spite of its profoundly dark tone, Gower still sees the 'Vox' as a source of light . . . . The ideal reader is one who can use the work as a mirror for deep meditation and self-reflection. Gower's greatest fear seems to be the person who absorbs nothing, remembers nothing, and projects his desires and will onto the world" (43). Drawn together here are the several strands of a complex argument in which Anderson portrays Gower as a shocked witness of the revolt who in the "Visio" "speaks as a moralist who wants to explicate, advise, and teach . . . to elucidate what the events signified" (24). For Gower, this meant an appeal to "sensory perception and its manifold claims to experience" (25) as an entry to understanding, and interpreting, the events as "signa." Anderson cites medieval theories of sense perception that merge visual and tactile experience, along with contemporary understanding of memory to argue that Gower's pastiche of Latin quotation in the "Visio" is a careful assertion through literary form of historical consciousness for his intended audience ("literate nobles searching for interpretive models to give meaning to their own perceptions and experiences of the revolt" [26])--a technique that comes with a moral edge. On the one hand, a knowledge of the past enacted by recognizing and comprehending the Latin demands remembrance, reflection, and moral assessment. This Gower hopes for his target readers, as a tool to enable "the learned and literate political elites whose own sins and moral lapses had, in the poet's eyes, helped to precipitate the revolt" (42). For these, some form of penitence, modelled by the dreamer, is in order. On the other side, in contrast, are the transformed peasants, who, as Anderson's examinations of their inhuman sounds and blind obedience to the Jackdaw's commands are to show, "are monstrous on account of their inability to properly absorb, and relate to, past and present experience . . . to weigh the ramifications of their actions" (36). Anderson's essay is ambitious in its wide-reaching multifocality, but in the main convincing, and offers several fresh approaches to Gower's "Visio." [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Anderson, Joel D. Published Anderson, Joel D. "The Weight of Experience: John Gower and the Peasants' Revolt of 1381." In Vernacular Aesthetics in the Later Middle Ages: Politics, Performativity and Reception from Literature to Music, ed. Katherine W. Jager (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Pp. 23-47. 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 The Weight of Experience: John Gower and the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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--chapter 10--is part of a larger analysis of poetic reception. It is a useful introduction into close-to-current thinking on poetic reception in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Gower is mentioned only a few times, however, and only the "Confessio Amantis." Attridge notes that the shift from French to English poetry in the period led to a "growing audience for poetry in English among the increasingly large circle of administrators who managed London's commercial interests and the merchants and traders who contributed to its wealth" (228). He cites Strohm and Middleton on our increasing sense of the period's audience and its social status, before moving on the broader question of poetic performance versus manuscript delivery. Attridge offers a fairly thorough analysis of "Troilus and Criseyde," and its representation of both performance and reading. Briefly shifting to Gower, he argues that the CA, like "Troilus and Criseyde," "hovers between the oral and the literate" (238); he then returns to Chaucer with the "Canterbury Tales," remarking that the sense of being caught between written and oral form seems to extend to the speaking pilgrims, as well. He then moves to a discussion of metrical form, which similarly focuses primarily on Chaucer, though he mentions Gower's "strict tetrameter verse" (243). He suggests that the pentameter line represents a break from "the song-oriented four-beat forms" (243). As a broad exploration of the slow shift from poetry as a purely oral form to its later existence primarily in writing, the chapter gives a good sense of a transitional period. That being said, scholars of Gower well find more here about the trends of his period than about his actual work. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Attridge, Derek. Published Attridge, Derek. "Chaucer, Gower, and Fifteenth-Century Poetry in English." In The Experience of Poetry: From Homer's Listener's to Shakespeare's Readers (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019), pp. 228-53. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Language and Word Studies 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 Chaucer, Gower, and Fifteenth-Century Poetry in English. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Elias argues that "the Squire's portrait in the "Canterbury Tales" is indebted to fourteenth-century crusade discourse, and that the ideological differences between the Knight and the Squire are well understood in relation to contemporary debates on the ethics of crusaders." (618) For Elias, the Knight and Squire reflect a series of rhetorical dichotomies associated with Crusader ethics: experienced wisdom vs. rashness of youth; material verses spiritual desires; and simple vs. opulent dress. Chaucer, as Elias states, associates the Squire with the Despenser Crusade in order to depict "a crusader, who embodies moral and behavioural weaknesses" (639). At various points in the essay, Elias compares Chaucer's representation of Crusader ethics (and Chaucer's critique of crusading generally) with Gower's discussions of crusades and crusading in his "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Confessio Amantis." Elias argues that Gower's references foreground (as do Chaucer's) the incompatibility of love with desire for worldly fame (which drives much of crusader ethics). [BWG. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Elias, Marcel. Published Elias, Marcel. "Chaucer and Crusader Ethics: Youth, Love, and the Material World." The Review of English Studies, New Series 70, no. 296 (2019): 618-39. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer and Crusader Ethics: Youth, Love, and the Material World. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Hadbawnik seeks to show that "poets deploy the pose of the 'master' guarding--but also offering to reveal--the professional secret as way to spur readers to discover higher truths in vernacular poems. Language can be alchemically transformed if readers work hard enough, devote themselves, and never rely completely on the vernacular but trust the poet to guide them in finding the perfect 'mixture' between classical and vernacular tongues. Poets writing in the English vernacular use the alchemical anecdote as a challenge--more generously, an invitation--to readers to participate in the project of language development in pursuit of higher truths. To achieve full understanding of such truths, poets imply, readers should not be satisfied with one tongue, but must allow poets to guide them in seeking the right mixture, via strategies such as language games and the code-switching inherent in macaronic texts" (202). Gower, who for Hadbawnik is "invested in the alchemical trope," "seems to position Latin alongside the vernacular in order to think through the poet's--and by extension, the reader's--relationship to language. For Gower, the alchemical anecdote offers hope working through Latin to achieve an understanding of deep hermetic truths in . . . the vernacular" (203). Thus he finds similarities between Norton and Gower: "the Latin in 'Confessio Amantis' contributes to a complex game of audience-shaping, enacting restrictions and tensions not unlike those noted in 'The Ordinal of Alchemy' . . . the frequent Latin belies an 'anxiety' about access to hidden knowledge that reflects a similar tension in alchemical texts such as Norton's" (216). Gower's work seems to "implicitly--and at times explicitly"--"map onto" what Hadbawnik calls "the professional secret of the alchemical anecdote" (217). The demands placed upon readers by Gower's shifts from Latin (prose and verse) to English and back again challenges in the same way that alchemical texts at once promise secret knowledge and yet withhold it. Hence Hadbawnik's claim that for Gower "alchemy [is] a sort of arch-metaphor for the vernacular poetic project" (219).] [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hadbawnik, David. Published Hadbawnik, David. "Alchemical Language: Latin and the Vernacular in the Poetry of Thomas Norton and John Gower." In Vernacular Aesthetics in the Later Middle Ages: Politics, Performativity, and Reception from Literature to Music, ed. Katherine W. Jager (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 201-33. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 Alchemical Language: Latin and the Vernacular in the Poetry of Thomas Norton and John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Rajendran's essay focuses on the "Constance Group" of medieval romances, including Gower's iteration of this tale in his "Confessio Amantis," and "The King of Tars." She argues that "reproductive futurity as it is imagined in these two narratives creates the crossroads that brings together monstrosity, race, and disability through their erasure" (128). Bodies that are non-white and non-Christian are presented as "illegible bodies" that must either be cured or eliminated. Rajendran suggests the "futures proposed by these narratives [are] the true monsters of the text, rather than the bodies that we are supposed to see as monstrous or 'different'" (130). The birthed children in both texts serve as symbols of the future. In "King of Tars," the princess uses the future child to convince the Sultan to convert, but what actually moves him to convert is "the power of Christianity, and the access to imperial power that it potentially offers him" (134). The "imagined future," in these texts, Rajendran claims, "creates a relationship between whiteness, Christianity, able-bodiedness, and imperial power" (134). Christianity is the only acceptable reproductive future, and thus Christian imperialism is acceptable imperialism. Constance, in both Gower's and Chaucer's tales, cannot be read only via her gender; rather, Rajendran asserts, we must acknowledge the "operations of imperial Christianity" (136). The mothers-in-law in this story must be depicted as monstrous to achieve the goals of imperial Christianity: "Because they resist the future that the narrative strives toward, the mothers-in-law must be made monstrous and eliminated. The language of monstrosity in the narrative is used as a prop to vilify characters that the narrative wants to destroy, and is used to heighten the emotional appeal of reading Constance as a victim" (137). Women's bodies, then, are simply fuel for the engine of imperialism in this tale, and to see Constance as the "other" distracts from the elimination of other identities in the imagined future of Christian imperialism. To conclude her essay, Rajendran cites Alison Kafer's discussion (from "Feminist, Queer, Crip") of the exclusion of queer and disabled kids from imagined futurity today to reflect on the same dynamic in the medieval texts she discusses: "to be part of the future [in these texts], one must be 'cured' of disability and blackness (as in "The King of Tars"), but the inability of women to be cured of their gender means that they must be eliminated once they have played their part in ensuring the continuity of the future (as in the death of Constance)" (142). [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rajendran, Shyama. Published Rajendran, Shyama. "E(Race)ing the Future: Imagined Medieval Reproductive Possibilities and the Monstrosity of Power." In Monstrosity, Disability, and the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World, ed. Richard H. Godden and Asa Simon Mittman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 127-43. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource E(Race)ing the Future: Imagined Medieval Reproductive Possibilities and the Monstrosity of Power. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Smith offers an analysis of the "fourteenth-century historical imaginary" as it works itself out in the versions of the "Custance legend" (195)--primarily Chaucer's, but she also acknowledges those of John Gower and Nicholas Trevet, largely as counterpoints to Chaucer. Smith suggests that the narrator's various interjections foregrounding questions of history and tale transmission may represent "real sites of debate about belief and the role of literary narrative in belief about the past" (197). Hence her shift to an overview of the tale's representation of the "Anglo-Saxon" past, with quick examinations of Trevet's and Gower's versions before contrasting them to Chaucer's. Without directly engaging with the complex critical history of the supposition, she invokes the idea of the CA being commissioned by Richard II--drawing the conclusion that whether we believe the story or not, it suggests the significance of early historical material to English identity, "a bok for Engelondes sake" (199). She suggests that "early history was tied undeniably to the present" for Gower (200), before briefly discussing late fourteenth-century uses of early English figures like Edward the Confessor (and presumably Custance) to frame a national self-image, grounded in an England prior to the Hundred Years' War. Drawing on language from Chaucer's "Complaint to His Purse" as an approach to the historical contextualization of English kingship, Smith then argues that the use of Custance in the "Man of Law's Tale" similarly sets up an ideal justifying power "by right of her lineage and by right of her virtue and merit" (202). Here she addresses Gower and Chaucer together in their relationships with Richard II and Henry IV who, she presumes, had similar interests in early English history. Her focus then returns to consider the Man of Law's interjections more specifically. She suggests an important difference between Chaucer's and Gower's versions of the story. Gower and Trevet both "offer plausible explanations" for the points the Man of Law questions: e.g., the believability of details (like why Custance wasn't murdered at her wedding in Syria) (203). This, Smith argues, positions the "Man of Law's Tale" as overtly rhetorical in its adaptation of its sources, which in turn allows Chaucer to push his reader toward a particular model of reading. In Chaucer's hands, Custance thus becomes "an interpretive tool" (205), as well as a narrative character. Ultimately, then, Gower serves largely as a foil for Chaucer in this reading. Smith works throughout the article with the fanciful idea of Chaucer performing the tale "even to his friend Gower" (197) somewhat invoking the old idea of a conflict between the poets around this tale without necessarily engaging with it in depth. This occasionally leads to fanciful moments: "If we then imagine Gower as a target audience in a highly self-conscious tale, parts of it then must be read in the spirit of a literary romp" (208-9). Certainly her various points along the way make more sense than not, but one cannot help but have the feeling that Smith is reading into Gower and Chaucer's relationship in a way that may not be fully grounded. Her sense of Chaucer's motivations in his adaptation of Gower can be very conjectural. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Smith, Kathleen. Published Smith, Kathleen. "Writing, Rewriting, and Disrupting the Anglo-Saxon Past in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale." In Jay Paul Gates and Brian O'Camb, eds. Remembering the Medieval Present: Generative Uses of England's Pre-Conquest Past, 10th to 15th Centuries (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019), pp. 195-214 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Writing, Rewriting, and Disrupting the Anglo-Saxon Past in Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review From Bentick's abstract: "This thesis displays the relationships between literary representations of alchemy and the literature produced by alchemists . . . . [focusing] on the allure of alchemy's obscure language. . . . [It begins with] an exploration of how the obscure language of alchemy was perceived by two non-alchemical poets: John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer. Chapter one . . . looks at the positive portrayal of alchemy in Gower's major works and chapter two looks at the negative portrayal of alchemy in Chaucer's 'The Canon's Yeoman's Tale'. . . . Chapter three delineates the heterogeneous alchemical verse found in a fifteenth-century manuscript: London, British Library, MS Harley 2407. This chapter defines and critiques four main categories of alchemical verse: gnomic poems, recipe-poems, theoretical poems, and conceit-poems. Chapter four examines the major works of two alchemical poets: George Ripley and Thomas Norton . . . . [and] the final . . . chapter presents instances from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century in which alchemical readers have suggested that non-alchemical texts harbour latent alchemical significations." Author/Editor Author/Editor Bentick, Eoin. Published Bentick, Eoin. "Alchemy and Verse in Late-Medieval England." Ph.D. Dissertation. University College London, 2019. Dissertation Abstracts International C81.04 (2019). Accessible at https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10065606/ (full text restricted); abstract accessed, February 22, 2022. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Alchemy and Verse in Late-Medieval England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review From Duprey-Henry's abstract: "This project sits at the juncture of medical humanities, disability studies, and literary studies to examine afresh the way that lovesickness is deployed in three canonical late-medieval English texts: Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde,' John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,' and the 'Book of Margery Kempe.' My attempt to read medieval lovesickness manifestly, taking its claims at face value, reveals love and lovesickness as an embodied and thus imminent process that organizes relationships around culturally defined ideas of either negotiation and mutuality or hierarchy. The lability of lovesickness as a narrative tool makes it an attractive trope to think through larger ideas about the relationships of the sexes, of one individual to another, of the individual to society, and of the individual to the divine." Author/Editor Author/Editor Duprey-Henry, Annalese. Published Duprey-Henry, Annalese. "Disciplining the Heart: Lovesickness in Medieval Literature." Ph.D. Dissertation, Northwestern University, 2019. 262 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A81.06(E) (2019). Full text accessible at ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (restricted); accessed February 21, 2022. 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 Disciplining the Heart: Lovesickness in Medieval Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review From Ward's abstract: "My dissertation elucidates how . . .William Langland [in 'Piers Plowman'], John Gower [in 'Confessio Amantis'], and Geoffrey Chaucer [in 'The Canterbury Tales'] . . . address the challenge posed to Christian ethics due to the proliferation of urban markets and increased personal wealth in medieval England . . . . [and] demonstrates that these vernacular authors appropriate the various genres of penitential literature, one of the most popular forms of writing in the period, to foster their readers as moral subjects . . . . [T]hese poets deploy the rhetorical techniques of a specific penitential discourse to argue that avarice--not pride--is the most pernicious vice because it diminishes communal wellbeing and harms individuals and their relations to God." Author/Editor Author/Editor Ward, Jessica D. Published Ward, Jessica D. "Penitentials to Poetry: The Literary Critique of Avarice in Fourteenth-Century England." Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2019. 218 pp. DAI A81.01 (2019). Full text accessible at http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/Ward_uncg_0154D_12677.pdf (unrestricted); accessed February 22, 2022. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Penitentials to Poetry: The Literary Critique of Avarice in Fourteenth-Century England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Larson seeks to show that "The frequent appearance of confession in Middle English literature after 1215 suggests medieval writers perceived the usefulness of confession as a rhetorical tool, and appropriated the ecclesiastical form to use it for literary purposes" (229). She selects for evidence "the confessional model" as exemplified in the "Confessio Amantis," the "Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale," and Hoccleve's "Male Regle." Her discussion of the CA covers pp. 240-43. Larson accepts that Gower is applying the confessional model without irony, although she notes that "'Confessio Amantis' explores the power of the confessional format even as the limitations of the form itself seem to be reached" with "the setting at the court of Venus rather than a church" (241), an intentional, and in Larson's judgment essentially successful, exploitation of the confessional form: "In following Amans' progress through the sins and witnessing how he comes to understand his true nature and status, and his humility at the end, it is possible to see the efficaciousness of confession even if it is not technically one aimed at Christian moral development" (242). The selection of Genius's exempla sometimes troubles her ("such as the multiple tales involving incest"[242]), but for Larson's purposes--illustrating the value of confession for medieval readers--the CA is quite successful. In it, "confession has proved a fertile practice for self-definition, even when only the form is followed, rather than form in the service of a spiritual end, as in a Christian confession" (243). Ultimately she summarizes her reading of Amans, the Canon's Yeoman, and Hoccleve thusly: "The appearance of these literary confessions can be traced back to the practice of annual auricular confession endorsed at the Fourth Lateran Council. Such texts influenced English literature profoundly by making confessional discourse familiar, and thus available as a rich rhetorical resource authors both appropriated and reworked for a variety of purposes" (270). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Larson, Wendy. Published Larson, Wendy. "Confessing Something New: The Twenty-First Canon of the Fourth Lateran Council and English Literature." In Maureen B. M. Boulton, ed. Literary Echoes of the Fourth Lateran Council in England and France, 1215-1405. Papers in Mediaeval Studies, no. 31. Toronto, Ontario: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2019. Pp. 229-70. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Confessing Something New: The Twenty-First Canon of the Fourth Lateran Council and English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Sobecki's position on "Troilus" argued here is that Chaucer's wardship of Edmund Staplegate and the Cecily Chaumpagne case impacts his poem's subject, which "fictionalizes questions of widowhood, wardship, and marriage, binding together Chaucer and the character of the go-between Pandarus through their shared social roles as guardians and matchmakers" (413). He "introduces four previously unknown documents: a contemporary legal challenge involving Staplegate from 1377; a new Chaucer life-record from 1382 connected to the Staplegate wardship; the earliest record, from 1381, showing Gower active in London; and the 1411 will of [Richard] Forster, Chaucer's lawyer in 1378" (413-14) when Chaucer went abroad. Sobecki suggests that Forster and Gower became Chaucer's lawyers to handle the murky issues surrounding the "valuable heir" Staplegate (423), Forster to handle London matters and Gower "probably appointed to maintain Chaucer's affairs outside of London, including any fallout from the Staplegate wardship in Kent" (425). In support, he provides a new document (National Archives, CP 40/82, m. 232f) showing that Gower "sued three men from Newington in Kent for debt in Easter term, 1381" (425). The document also indicates Gower was then in residence, perhaps only temporarily, in London, since as Michael Bennett has shown, in the 1380s Gower was primarily in Kent (426). Sobecki transcribes and translates the Common Pleas document on 436-37. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sobecki, Sebastian. Published Sobecki, Sebastian. "Wards and Widows: 'Troilus and Criseyde' and New Documents on Chaucer's Life." English Literary History 86 (2019): 413-40. 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 Wards and Widows: "Troilus and Criseyde" and New Documents on Chaucer's Life. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Sobecki brings together studies of five poets--Gower, Hoccleve, Caudray, Lydgate, and Ashby--as, in a sense, test cases for a theory of the medieval self as what he terms "indexical": "the indexical self is not a discrete entity . . . it is comprised of social interactions, contexts, and relationships. It could even be argued that the indexical self is not strictly a self in that it cannot exist outside of its social context" (11). To illustrate this via Gower, Sobecki focuses on London, British Library, MS Additional 59495 (olim Trentham), owned by Gower at his death, and more specifically two poems from that manuscript, "In Praise of Peace" and "Henrici Quarti primus" (also known as "Quicquid homo scribat" or "In fine"). The argument of the chapter on Gower (19-64) is primarily the same as presented in a previously published article, "Ecce patet tensus': The Trentham Manuscript, 'In Praise of Peace,' and John Gower's Autograph Hand," Speculum 90 (2015): 925-59 (see online Gower bibliography), although recast to reflect the book's different, and larger, purpose. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sobecki, Sebastian. Published Sobecki, Sebastian. Last Words: The Public Self and the Social Author in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies In Praise of Peace 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 Last Words: The Public Self and the Social Author in Late Medieval England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Alberghini, Jennifer. Published Alberghini, Jennifer. Divided Loyalties: Family and Consent to Marriage in Late Middle English Literature, 1300-1500. Ph.D. Dissertation. City University of New York, 2019. Dissertation Abstracts International A80.08(E). Abstract accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Fully accessible via https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3085/ (accessed April 1, 2026). Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Background and General Criticism Review Alberghini's dissertation studies the theme of marital consent in late medieval literature in English, providing background in Derridean consent theory and in medieval social and legal discourse about tensions between marital consent and parental control. As she describes it in her abstract Alberghini's analysis ranges widely in the literature, sifting a number of works to offer some rather blunt conclusions: "I begin with Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' and 'The Legend of Good Women,' which conflict over this dilemma [personal choice versus deferral to higher authority], and show how the issues brought up in both texts are resolved in 'The Man of Law's Tale.' This leads me to Chapter 2 on 'The King of Tars' and John Gower's 'Tale of Apollonius of Tyre' in the 'Confessio Amantis,' which combine parental support and filial obedience to satisfy both individual desire and political needs. The texts of Chapter 3, 'Blanchardyn and Eglantine' and the Charlemagne romance 'The Sultan of Babylon,' further show how female characters, in these cases, Saracen princesses, could affect their countries' political futures through marriage. This message likely resonated with the patron of the former, Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother. Patrons also figure in Chapter 4, as Osbern Bokenham's 'Legendys of Hooly Wummen,' which I read next to John Capgrave's 'Life of St. Katherine,' were written for married women and couples. I conclude looking at mother's [sic] perspectives throughout these texts. Through my reading of this wide variety of works, I find that consent is very much emphasized in literature, with 'good' parents supporting their children's choices and 'bad' parents, who were also often non-Christian, trying to prevent these marriages from occurring. This emphasis thus suggests that we reconsider the opposition between medieval and modern ideas of gender, with marriage as one area in which medieval women could have some freedom." [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 Divided Loyalties: Family and Consent to Marriage in Late Middle English Literature, 1300-1500. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Brenner, Caitlin R. Published Brenner, Caitlin R. Translating Ovid's "Heroides": Three Middle English Collections of Women. Ph.D. Dissertation. Texas A&M University, 2019. vi, 158 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A83.11(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global and at https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/items/a54ed9ad-791b-44fa-9fc6-810cb25a111c. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review Brenner's abstract: "This work foregrounds gendered metaphors of translation in three collections of 'good' women's lives adapted and compiled from Ovid's 'Heroides' ('Epistulae Heroidum'): Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women,' John Gower's 'Confessio amantis,' and Osbern Bokenham's 'Legendys of Hooly Wummen.' While these texts remain understudied, I argue that these collections constitute the authors' most overt representations of themselves as English translators. As each poet restrains and restricts the 'heathen' women's complaints during translation, he likewise restrains and restricts the feminized 'heathen' tongue: English. By identifying how these and other early English authors theorized their approach to translation, I demonstrate that metaphors of reproduction, exile, and female writing are replicated in important vernacular works up until the end of the sixteenth century. Chapters examine how the three authors appropriate Ovid's poetic exile, the poets' gendered ventriloquism as a vernacular authorial position, and the texts' engagements with the Catalog of Women genre and its emphasis on feminine reproduction." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Translating Ovid's "Heroides": Three Middle English Collections of Women. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review From Ensley's abstract: "this dissertation argues that for the producers and readers of the medieval romance, the genre and the books that preserved it were a means by which readers could both travel to the past and meditate on their connections with that past. Combining bibliographical analysis, reception history, literary interpretation, and theories of cultural memory and historiography, this project demonstrates that polytemporal material objects allowed readers to experience both present and past in directions that unsettle the period divisions foundational to much modern scholarship . . . . Chapter Four uses Thomas Berthelette's 1532 folio edition of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' alongside William Shakespeare's reimagining of Gower in his late romance 'Pericles' to explore the monumentality of fourteenth-century authors and texts in early-modern literary cultures. I argue that while Berthelette's edition buries Gower in a monumental folio, separating the medieval author from a work deemed timeless, Shakespeare's play both recognizes Gower's alterity and simultaneously insists on his presence in living cultural memory." Ensley also comments recurrently on Gower's early modern reputation elsewhere in her study. [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ensley, Mimi. Published Ensley, Mimi. Re-forming the Past: The Medieval Romance Book as a Dynamic Site of Memory. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Notre Dame, 2019. vi, 315 pp.; illus. Dissertation Abstracts International A81.09(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion 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 Re-forming the Past: The Medieval Romance Book as a Dynamic Site of Memory. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Orton, Daniel. Published Orton, Daniel.  Theories of Poetry, 1256-1400. D.Phil. Dissertation. University of Oxford, 2019. v, 282 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International C83.06(E). Freely accessible at https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:dfc9eb17-71d5-425f-a7b1-2e835310e322; abstract available via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Review "This thesis explores some submerged aspects of the history of the theory of poetry in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, examining the circumstantial factors motivating its intellectual, religious, and moral developments. Starting with the early university men, it argues that the important poetic initiatives of scholastic writers, specifically, Roger Bacon, anticipated the literary advancements and innovative claims conventionally ascribed to the poetic theories of the Italian humanists at the turn of the century. It tracks these theoretical developments and ideas as they move through the exuberant affirmations of poetry made by Albertino Mussato and into the vernacular works of the English writers, John Gower [in the "Confessio Amantis"] and Geoffrey Chaucer [in "The House of Fame"], who ruthlessly interrogate the instability of their own art and explore the uncertainties of literary reception and transmission. Here, the progressive expansion of the status and power of poetic discourse, which had been fought for and won by previous generations of theorists, is conclusively and soundly rejected" (ii). In his chapter on Gower (pp. 109-66), Orton argues that the poet questions poetry's ability to convey meaning reliably: "Gower abandons the radical confidence of the earlier humanist writers . . . in order to adopt a distinctly sceptical view of the power of poetic discourse. Although he demonstrates a strong belief in the transformative potential and moral benefit of his art, he appears equally suspicious of its ability to achieve anything with any certainty. That poetry could be both paralytically futile and morally valuable represents an important self-ironizing tension that drives the 'Confessio' forward . . . , typical of Gower's desire to thoroughly excise all interpretative stability from his poem. Because the poetic experience represented a crisis of certainty for the reader, there was the very real--and necessary--danger that the dark matter of poetry might remain entirely impenetrable" (116). Orton explores and exemplifies how this "self-ironizing tension" operates in a complex network of ways in CA, large and small, formal and stylistic, overt and submerged. As a "compilatio," CA poses Ovidian hermeneutical variety without resolution, Orton tells us; its "Latin apparatus serves to further impede the efforts of readers to wrest singular meaning from the poem" (123), and its recurrent instances of rhyme riche produce a "dominant effect of disorientation" (127). For Orton, multiple prologues in the poem--especially the main Prologue and the prologue to Book I--pose differing views of what poetry can and should do, while the exchanges between Amans and Genius anatomize "complex range of psychological responses to narrative poetry." Their exchanges constitute a "psychomachia" that "explores the tangled interactions of the internal faculties of the soul, observing both the beneficial and potentially detrimental impact of literary material" (136), focusing attention on how "the evidential status of narrative poetry" is beyond the understanding of individual readers/listeners embodied in Amans (147). Individual narratives in CA, for Orton, contribute to or evince the destabilization of single or simple outlooks on meaning: the paired tales that open Book IV (Aeneas and Dido; Ulysses and Penelope), for example, pose alternative kinds of readers or reading, leading Orton to suggest that, in this light, "there were no texts and no authors, and instead only readers" (147). Similarly, Genius's description of the trial of Cataline in Book VII expresses general wariness about the dangerous power of "affective discourse" (152), prompting Orton to connect this wariness with the overall "blandness" of Gower's style (154); the lack of a narrated resolution to Cataline's trial, Orton tells us, leaves readers to formulate their own conclusions. Orton weaves these and other arguments and evidence in ways that are hard to capture here fully, and he situates them in various rhetorical, exegetical, and psychological contexts, often aligned with the Aristotelian moral philosophy of Giles of Rome and John Trevisa, also difficult to summarize briefly. Notably, Orton punctuates this intricate discussion with resounding, provocative assertions about Gower and his work: the CA "is, in the end, a bleak assessment of the moral utility of poetry" (159); Gower was, for Chaucer, a "moral" poet because "moral poetry was not moralizing poetry, it was darkly uncertain, rich in diversity, and laden with a satirical force that enacted itself on the reader" (163); for Gower, "Arion was a humanist fantasy, a parody of the authoritative and divinely inspired 'poeta theologus,' at least as he perceived it" (164). [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 Theories of Poetry, 1256-1400. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Runstedler, Curtis. Published Runstedler, Curtis. "John Gower's Alchemical Afterlife in Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652)." Neophilologus 104 (2020): 263-81. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review Runstedler explores "the ways in which Gower's alchemy was received by early modern readers in literary and alchemical traditions." He describes Gower's presentation of alchemy in Book IV of the "Confessio Amantis" and Elias Ashmole's commentary on Book IV in "Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum," focusing on the philosophical and moral emphases of the practice in both works, and arguing that Ashmole decontextualizes Book IV, reproduces some sixteenth-century notions of Gower, and, as a result, misinterprets Gower as an "alchemical master." Runstedler outlines the withering of Gower's poetic reputation in the sixteenth century, identifies similarities between Gower's views on alchemy and Thomas Norton's in the "Ordinall of Alchemy" (1477), and maintains that Ashmole's work reflects Gower's high reputation as a practicing alchemist and as Chaucer's Master" (Eliaas's term) and "mentor" (Runstedler's) in the science. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Alchemical Afterlife in Elias Ashmole's "Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum" (1652). Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bullón-Fernández asserts that the MO explores gender, sex, and language leading to deeper implications than critics have thus far realized. She argues, "Gower develops an authorial voice and a poetics that in its embrace of male and female can be identified as queer." Bullón-Fernández first points us to an early passage in the poem (lines 1021-32) to show us Gower's invocation of the figure of the hermaphrodite, making "intersexuality more than a trope." The intersexual nature of the sins, Bullón-Fernández adds, presents a category crisis that further reflects on Gower's authorial persona, his poem, and his poetics. Gower uses queer language in his confession, acknowledging previous poetry that was "gender ambiguous or queer." Bullón-Fernández calls this an "authorial self-disciplining process," but she is careful to distinguish this as distancing rather than rejection. That is, when Gower "re-invents" himself, he still relies on "queer associations and queer ambiguities." To demonstrate this argument, Bullón-Fernández focuses on queer "indeterminaciones" in the poem--both language and gender--through a close reading of the depiction of Satan and the temptation of Eve, which illuminates the intersexual sins. These queer indeterminacies then provoke queer desires, claims Bullón-Fernández, specifically in the figure of Wantonness. She adds that the sins' associations with gender ambiguity are in addition to language and deception, which in turn links all three. Bullón-Fernández then suggests that the figure of Wantoness "introduces the specter of sodomy." Finally, Bullón-Fernández addresses Gower's confession at the end of MO and how his poetic approach to the Life of the Virgin Mary "suggests that he does not ultimately renounce [queer courtly language and practices associated with it] but reorients them, developing a different kind of queer poetics." She sees two types of fear expressed in his confession: gender anxiety and sodomy anxiety. Then, in the "Life of the Virgin Mary," Bullón-Fernández demonstrates how Gower queers divine figures, concluding that he strives to unify male and female. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bullón-Fernández, María. Published Bullón-Fernández, María. Gower's Queer Poetics in the "Mirour de l'Omme." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 6 (2020): n.p. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Queer Poetics in the "Mirour de l'Omme." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This volume is comprised of fourteen essays selected by the editors from the papers presented at the joint meeting held at Durham University, 2017, of the Fifteenth Biennial Conference of the Early Book Society and the IV International Congress of the John Gower Society. Each essay is a revised and expanded version of the "briefer, orally delivered" version, transformed into a "print-worthy" chapter of "value and distinction" (2), and summarized by the editors. Together, the editors tell us in their Introduction (1-10), the essays "showcase fertile diversity," offer substantially new research, and promise to stimulate "further collaborative study" by "scholars of Gower's poetry and book history" (10). Several of the essays are, as the editors put it, "granular examinations" (8): Batkie and Nafde both focus on a single manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 92); Watt, on British Library, Additional MS 39495; and Gastle, on a single copy of a print edition (the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill copy of Caxton's "Confessio Amantis"). Others target wider concerns: Scase shows how Gower's regular meter can be seen to account for the consistency of scribal presentation of his English language. Boffey explores the idea of authorship in early printings of Gower and their paratexts, and Kobayashi addresses Tudor humanism as a feature of Gower's reception. Gerber, Pérez-Fernandez, and Echard also attend to paratextual matters--what they show and what they can tell us. Epstein and Taylor consider the thematic-political issue of sovereignty or lordship and its implications for the dating of Gower's poetry and his revisions. Connolly challenges Macaulay's excision of an excellent lyric from Gower's corpus, and Edwards shows that Macaulay's edition monumentalized the poet, but not the editor. The volume includes a substantial bibliography of primary and secondary sources (pp. 263-88) and a comprehensive index (pp. 289-303). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Driver, Martha, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Published Driver, Martha, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. xvii, 303 pp.; 19 illus. ISBN 9781843843539. Gower Subject BackgroundS and General Criticism Manuscripts and Textual Studies Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Scase takes on a fundamental question of Gower textual scholarship: why is the text of "Confessio Amantis" in some important manuscripts of such high quality, unusually consistent in grammar and orthography at a time when scribal dialects so often affected copying? Why didn't meddlesome scribes "meddle" (16) with the text of CA as they did with other texts? Traditional explanations reply that Gower must have somehow supervised the scribes directly, perhaps through a particular scriptorium or network. Scase's innovative explanation is meter: Gower's extraordinarily regular metrical verse "'depends' upon variant forms" (20; original emphasis), an unusual variety of linguistic forms--orthographical, morphological, and dialectical--and in order to maintain that meter, scribes had to reproduce the linguistic forms carefully, copying, in effect, "litteratim" or letter by letter, because meter demanded it. Verse less metrically regular than Gower's allowed for greater meddling, although rhymed verse tellingly, Scase observes, had long encouraged scribes to reproduce unfamiliar dialect forms to maintain rhyme pairs; similarly, perhaps by extension, she argues, Gower's scribes reproduced his orthography, morphology, and dialect to reproduce his meter with considerable success. By way of demonstration, Scase examines a sample passage (CA 1.203-34) from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 3, showing how closely metrical regularity depends upon varied uses of final --"e," other inflectional endings, infinitive forms, elisions, optional nasals, etc., and effectively "'required' intensive literatim reproduction" (22; original emphasis). She comments further on how and where Fairfax corrections in the text reflect sensitivity to meter, and then analyzes the sample passage in three more CA manuscripts (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Bodley 902, 294, and 693), adding nuance to her argument about meter, linguistic variety, and careful copying, and generalizing, for example, that Bodley 902 and 294 "comprise literatim output when it is important for meter, but not when it is unnecessary" (24) while Bodley 693 and Fairfax 3 share this "general aim and practice" but differ in "details of implementation and in the degree of skill they displayed in doing so" (24-25). Scase analyzes other passages from CA that were copied by the "five Trinity Gower scribes" in Trinity College, MS R.3.2 (Scribes A, B, C, D, and E, labeled by A. I. Doyle and M. B. Parkes), further evincing the relations between meter and Gowerian linguistic forms. She opens her arguments out to broader application by noting attention to meter in manuscripts of non-Gowerian, less regular metrical poetry copied by these scribes, especially Scribes D and E. In this way, Scase suggests that a "dynamic process" was underway, undertaken by a group of perhaps "networked" scribes, probably based in London, engaged in "trying to improve their outputs" (31). Sensitivity to rhyme led scribes to imitate dialectical forms in the rhyme-pairs; then, sensitivity to strict meter led to dialectical forms elsewhere in the verse lines, and accurate copying was set on course. The opening and closing notes in Scase's essay indicate that the essay is part of a larger project on interconnected developments of verse and copying in late-medieval England, and she here gives Gower an important place in these developments. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Scase, Wendy. Published Scase, Wendy. "John Gower's Scribes and Literatim Copying." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 13-31. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Scribes and Literatim Copying. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Batkie locates "moral Gower" in the version of the poet's verse chronicle "Cronica Tripertita" found in MS Hatton 92, rather than (or in addition to) in Chaucer's reference in "Troilus and Criseyde" 5.1856. The only extant manuscript version of CrT found unattached to the "Vox Clamantis," the Hatton CrT is accompanied "compilationally" by various kinds of moral materials--axioms, proverbs, fables, parables, exempla, etc.--and Gower's poem is presented in a way that it "resonates with the strongly exemplaric and moralizing agenda of the collection as a whole" (36). Marginal references to Gower and to the VC near the opening of the Hatton CrT--marginalia added to the text in a sixteenth-century hand as Batkie observes--are occasion to explore the exemplarity of CrT for readers aware of the absent-but-present VC. Batkie then concentrates on the prologues and openings of the Hatton CrT and the CrT found in All Souls 98 (Macaulay's base text), showing that Hatton "re-ordered pieces of the opening of the text" (48) in ways that "favors exemplarity over chronicle" (49), in effect, emphasizing a moral Gower rather than a political one, even when the VC is not present. Her arguments are complicated, involving attention to several instances of "ghostly" (37) absent presence, to temporal slipperiness, and to negotiations "between the permanent and the ephemeral, between what remains behind and what disappears in time" (43). Such concerns, she maintains, define "the parameters by which Gower understands his chronicle form" (44), casting "history as exemplarity," a "relationship" which the "scribes and readers of MS Hatton 92 take . . . to heart and capitalize on" (45), bringing the CrT "in line with the other texts of the manuscript," perhaps compelling similar readings of the other, shorter Latin poems by Gower in the manuscript, and perhaps "preempt[ing] some readings of Gower's work even as it opens up others" (52). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Batkie, Stephanie L/ Published Batkie, Stephanie L. "Looking for Richard: Finding "Moral Gower" in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 92." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 33-53. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Cronica Tripertita Vox Clamantis 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 Looking for Richard: Finding "Moral Gower" in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 92. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Epstein opens his essay by pointing out that Gowerians have widely accepted that changes made between the first and third recensions of CA (a putative second recension being discredited) reflect changes in Gower's view of royal authority from absolutist (Ricardian) to constitutionalist (Lancastrian). He questions neither the recensions nor their sequencing, but argues that their differences "might best be understood not as the conflict between absolutism and constitutionalism, but rather as the tension between 'divine' and 'sacred' [elsewhere 'sacral'] kingship" (61), a distinction he derives from the combined studies of anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and David Graeber, "On Kings" (2017). Sacral kingship, according to Sahlins and Graeber in Epstein's summation, is "the original principle of kingship in all societies," characterized by an understanding of the king as "meta-human" rather than "god-like," distinguished by the "key-concept" of the "stranger-king" (59), and sacralized through ritual in order to maintain the king's separateness from his people while "containing the power of the king." Further, the sovereignty of the king and the sovereignty of the people "share an ontogeny" (60) producing an ongoing tension, sometimes manifest in carnivalesque versions of regicide. After explaining Sahlins and Graeber's theory of kingship as an "anthropological phenomenon" (58) in this way, Epstein applies it to portions of CA, reading the exempla of Book 7, for example, as concerned with the limiting of kingship: "not about the power of the king but rather about the containment of the latent claims of divine kingship" (64), and, to take another example, observing that Henry, even in the third recension (Prologue and end of Book 8), is "not . . . a prospective king," but a figure of "divinely ordained knighthood that can restrict the power of the king" (67). When Richard is "banished from the third recension," as Epstein puts it, he is replaced not by Henry, but by an "'Engelond' that emerges in the imaginative absence of Richard II"--a "corporate resistance to royal authority, sacral in reaction to claims of divinity, emerging as sovereign statehood" (68), and, just possibly, a "modern moment--the supplanting of a sacral king by the state apparatus originally invented to contain him" (70). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Epstein, Robert. Published Epstein, Robert. "A State above All Other: The Recensions of Confessio Amantis and the Anthropology of Sovereignty." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 55-70. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A State above All Other: The Recensions of "Confessio Amantis" and the Anthropology of Sovereignty. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Taylor argues that Gower's "The Tale of the Two Coffers" (CA 5.2273-2390) engages at least two concerns that underlie much of the "Confessio Amantis" and possibly underlie its revision: ethical choice and the relation of outward signs to inner reality--what Taylor calls "referential integrity" (78). She contrasts the tale with analogous accounts in Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" and Boccaccio's "Decameron" to show that Gower's stark plot poses "a nonsensical parody of ethical choice" (78) and that its two externally identical casks with differing contents present the "hapless courtiers" (80) with a pair of signs that are impossible to distinguish rationally. Mention of fortune in Gower's account and the "shadowy evocation of grace" (78) help to raise questions about the king's test as well as the courtiers' choice, and enable Taylor to align details of the tale with Wycliffite arguments about the apprehension of truth, material possession, and their relations with secular dominium, or lordship. She suggests that "the work of the tale is to figure out how Gower's understanding of kingly authority and just rule differs from the emergent [and politically dangerous] Wycliffite discourse of dominium" (84) in which only "unknowable grace" (85) makes it possible to recognize and thereby choose to follow true dominium. Further, the "tense equipoise of sympathy and critique--toward both courtiers and king--registers an uneasiness with partisanship of any kind, especially when it comes to claims of grace-based right to rule" (85-86). The tale, Taylor tells us, "pointedly implicates Richard" (86) and is concerned with issues that "later became the backbone of the case against Richard's tyranny," even though the terms the tale "uses to explore them are almost pointedly non-partisan" (87). Nevertheless, the "discomfort" the tale "registers with the exercise of dominion" enables Taylor to posit an innovative "explanation of the Henrician revisions" to the CA: "the possibility that the revised recension ending [of CA] articulates not so much a vision of ideal dominium as an uneasy "ex post facto" philosophical justification of Gower's shift in allegiance" from Richard to Henry (87-88). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Taylor, Karla. Published Taylor, Karla. "What Lies Beneath." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 71-88. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 What Lies Beneath. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gerber describes her undertaking as follows: "This essay proposes that, in the process of using geographical locations to ground his narratives, Gower appropriates a skeptical tradition dating back to antiquity while also contributing a new sense of mythological meaning. As a result, Gower's comparatively limited interest in physical geography yields a relatively sophisticated interest in textual geography, resulting in exegetical approaches that generate multivalent readings of the historical events depicted within the 'Confessio' and the 'Vox Clamantis'" (90). Central to this undertaking is Gerber's discussion of the four Gower-as-archer-shooting-at-the-world illustrations that illuminate manuscripts of VC; she focuses specifically on the depicted worlds as versions of the "mappaemundi" that combine five-climate-zone and T-O (or "orbis terrarium") designs in different ways. The depictions are beautifully reproduced. Gerber analyzes details of three of the four orbs (the fourth is a near duplicate), arguing that their differences "illustrate the fluidity of geographical topics in the Middle Ages" and, in something of a leap, asserting that "the image of the terrestrial target introduces . . . the treatment of malleable geo-historical subjects" in VC (106). Earlier in the essay, Gerber cites Gower's reference to "Mappemounde" in CA 7.530 and argues that "Gower's uses of geographical references when constructing the historical narratives [in CA] indicates some awareness of the euhemeristic approach" to mythology, as when he attributes the "deified qualities" (94) of wind-god Aeolus to the fact his home island of Sicily is windy (CA 5.967-80), or when he presents Pluto as having a childhood and swearing by the rivers of hell in CA 5.1108-10--examples of how Gower follows euhemerists "to interpret ancient texts as literal ones" (93). Geography often figures in euhemeristic literalizations of myths as history, Gerber argues, and this "geo-historical exegetics" (91; quotation marks in original) is the common thread in her discussions of passages from CA, the archer illustrations, and passages from the VC. Gerber's essay is ambitious, introducing a new heuristic for Gower's geographical references and arguing that a skeptical yet flexible exegetical imagination underlies this heuristic. Yet this very capaciousness leads to some fuzziness--a key concept in her statement of goals above, "textual geography" [90], is never defined--, some conceptual leaps haunt her dense prose, and some avoidable errors lurk. For example, "vertical" should be "horizontal" twice in the discussion of the Laud "mappa mundi," where, also, it is air, not water, above the terrestrial building that, Gerber asserts tendentiously, "likely represents the Tower of London" (105). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gerber, Amanda J. Published Gerber, Amanda J. "Earthly Gower: Transforming Geographical Texts and Images in the Confessio Amantis and Vox Clamantis Manuscripts." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 89-112. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Earthly Gower: Transforming Geographical Texts and Images in the "Confessio Amantis" and "Vox Clamantis" Manuscripts Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In this essay Pérez-Fernández assesses examples of variation in the paratextual materials of the manuscripts of the Portuguese and Castilian translations of Gower's "Confessio Amantis": Madrid, Real Biblioteca MS II-3088 and Madrid, Biblioteca del Escorial g-II-19. She focuses on the translations of the Latin summaries (generally thought to have been written by Gower) that preface the narratives of CA and on the table of content written in Castilian but found in each Iberian manuscript. Pérez-Fernández discusses details of these materials, contributing to what is already known about their transmission, and offering perspective on their cultural contexts. Some variations, she shows, "can be understood as a desire to cater to the concerns of the new Iberian audience" (119-20)--mention of Spain, for example, not found in the Latin original, or specific emphasis on the "wisdom" ("sabedoria") of Alphonse X, "commonly known as Alphonse the Wise" (120). Conversely, when the table of contents in MS Real Biblioteca omits reference to the wisdom of Alphonse, Pérez-Fernández surmises, it may reflect the "complicated relationship between the Trastamara rulers and Alphonse's legitimate and illegitimate heirs" (121). Other details invite "us to reconsider the relation of the Portuguese and the Castilian manuscripts both from a textual and a translatological point of view" (125): the tabulator's sensitivity to capital letters and spaces, for example, shows that he "used the Portuguese text itself to create the new entries where there was no summary available," an act of "conscientious labor of adaptation and improvement" (126). Details drawn from "external sources"--e.g., Tristan's origins in "leonjs" (Leonis) and Isolde's "brunda" (blonde) hair--indicate familiarity with the "Castilian version of the story, and not with the Castilian-Aragonese" and "help us draw a more defined portrait of the scribes and translators." Pérez-Fernández tallies, she tells us, "some of the most notable examples of deviations in the paratexts of the Iberian manuscripts" of CA in order to "reveal the processes of textual transmission and reception" of the work (129). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pérez-Fernández, Tamara. Published Pérez-Fernández, Tamara. "Paratextual Deviations: The Transmission and Translation of Gower's Confessio Amantis in the Iberian Peninsula." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 113-30. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Paratextual Deviations: The Transmission and Translation of Gower's "Confessio Amantis" in the Iberian Peninsula. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 value of Watt's essay for the study of Gower manuscripts lies in its suggestion that the "terminus ad quem" of London, British Library, Additional MS 59495 ("olim" the Trentham MS) should be extended to "at least late 1400 if not 1401" (151) and that much of the entire manuscript (which includes "Cinkante Balades" and several of Gower's Latin lyrics) "offers a meditation on the king's responsibility to address schism and heresy without excessive violence" (150), signaled by the emphasis on pity at the end of "In Praise of Peace" that "primes readers to look for [pity] throughout the rest" of the manuscript (146). Watt's dating of the manuscript relies on his claim that when Gower wrote the final stanza of "In Praise of Peace" he "had Manuel II in mind" (132), referring to Greek Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus who visited the English court in late 1400 to seek support for war against the Ottoman Turks. This plausible, although unprovable, claim depends upon Watt's extension of the MED definition of "mescreantz" (PP 268) to include not only pagans and infidels but also heretics and schismatics, and it leads to Watt's "argument . . . that Gower includes Manuel II"--Greek Orthodox rather than Roman Catholic--"among the 'other princes cristene all'" (PP 380) whom Gower enjoins to "Sette ek the rightful Pope upon his stalle" (PP 383), appealing for, as Watt puts it, an "end to the Great Schism as well as the Western Schism" (137). Watt supports his reading with analysis of the "final exemplum" of "In Praise of Peace," the tale of Emperor Constantine's conversion, an analysis based on Watt's "assumption that readers . . . would likely know the version of Constantine's conversion story that Gower tells" in Book II of "Confessio Amantis" and "chooses not to tell at all" (139) in "In Praise of Peace." Differences between the two versions, Watt tells us, "assert that mercy [pity] and piety are better than a bloodbath . . . . a particularly urgent argument at a time when the emperor [Manuel] himself had come to seek help in the wake of Nicopolis" (140) where crusaders had been routed. Watt contrasts Gower's aversion to crusade in the "Praise of Peace" version of the Constantine tale with the more bellicose views of Philippe de Mézières and those of Adam Usk, two writers Watt uses to clarify the context of Gower's views throughout his essay, which he closes with a survey of the theme of pity in the Trentham manuscript and a brief account of the English payment to Manuel II. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Watt, David. Published Watt, David. "'Mescreantz,' Schism, and the Plight of Constantinople: Evidence for Dating and Reading London, British Library, Additional MS 59495." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 131-51. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies In Praise of Peace Cinkante Ballade Minor Latin Poetry Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Mescreantz,'"Schism, and the Plight of Constantinople: Evidence for Dating and Reading London, British Library, Additional MS 59495. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In his monumental edition of Gower's works, G. C. Macaulay argued largely on prosodic grounds that the English lyric, "Passe forþe þou pilgryme"--attributed to Gower by John Shirley in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 59--was not by Gower. In this essay, Connolly challenges the disattribution by affirming the reliability of Shirley's attributions, by critiquing Macaulay's stylistic concerns, and by examining the "environment" (163) in which Macaulay made his decision, specifically discussions of the lyric by German scholars undertaken near the time when Macaulay published his edition. Connolly is expert on Shirley, and she justifiably refers to her own work in maintaining Shirley's reliability. Yet, her other arguments are less powerful, and they do not lead to any conviction--hers or mine--that the poem is by Gower, only that the "question of the authenticity" of the lyric "deserves renewed and urgent attention" (166), which it indeed does. It is a powerful lyric, in the tradition of Chaucer's "Truth" as Connolly points out, and included by Shirley in a compilation of related pieces, otherwise all by John Lydgate, as Connolly also records, commenting "were the poem not so clearly labelled as Gower's" by Shirley, "it could pass for one of Lydgate's" (154). Connolly usefully edits the thirty-five line poem in its entirety, helping to bring it back from the obscurity into which Macaulay's treatment helped to cast it, and she discusses all three manuscript witnesses to its text, along the way confronting and rejecting John Stow's attribution of the lyric to Benedict Burgh in British Library, MS Additional 29729, later than Shirley's by some 100 years. I do not think, however, that the poem is Gower's, nor that Connolly's surmises about "how far Macaulay may have been influenced by . . . German scholars" of the time (164) undermines the editor's opinion about attribution. As for metrical concerns, Connolly claims the "disturbance to regular scansion" (162) in the lyric--regularity being so characteristic of Gower--is due to Shirley's "South West Midlands" dialect conflicting with Gower's East Midlands dialect, but she does not provide enough evidence to help me reject Macaulay's claim, as she records, that "It is almost impossible that these verses can have been written by Gower" (155; Macaulay II, clxxiii). I am grateful to be introduced to "Passe forþe" and, with Connolly, would very much like to know who wrote it. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Connolly, Margaret. Published Connolly, Margaret. "John Shirley and John Gower." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 153-66. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Shirley and John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In his review in JGN 22.1 (2003) of Echard's 2001 essay "Dialogues and Monologues: Manuscript Representations of the Conversation in the Confessio Amantis," Peter Nicholson observed the critic's "long-term study of the effect of MS design and layout upon reading and reception." That long-term study is extended here once again, by Echard's examinations of representations of conversation in William Caxton and Thomas Berthelette's editions as well as those found in various manuscripts, and by her lengthier analysis of how manuscripts and early printed editions of CA represent--or obscure--Gower's "multilingual enterprise" (181), particularly the "unique . . . insistence on the integral role of Latin to his English enterprise" (185) evident in the Latin glosses and commentary of CA. Generally, Echard argues, "features of Gower's oeuvre were often muted, redirected, or lost entirely, when the poet's work encountered the strictures and expectations of early print" (171), attributing these fall-offs to the limited flexibility of early print or to the printer's goals in promoting English. As Echard shows, the bi-lingulism and tri-lingualism of some Gower manuscripts is overt, even emphasized, in a "whole range of ways"--rubrication, placement of glosses, location in compilations, prefaces and colophons, etc.--and "Gower's original audience, immersed in manuscript culture, was primed to navigate these meaningful 'ordinationes'." Limitations in early print technology (single fonts and difficulties in two-color printing, for example) contributed to the "visual-linguistic flattening in Caxton's design" (181), while Berthelette, promoting Gower as an "English" poet, rearranged the opening of CA and, in effect, "diffuses its bilingual claim" (184). The "dialogic design" of CA--the conversational exchange between Amans and Genius--is graphically evident in print layout as well as in the manuscripts, but Caxton's table of contents "serves to frame" the work "as a collection of stories rather than as a dialogue" (186), reshaping its fundamental structure and in doing so muting aspects of Amans' character. Berthelette's table forecasts for the reader "not just . . . a collection of stories" . . . but an . . . encyclopedia," and it "reflects print's more radical reshaping of Gower's end matter" (187), again deemphasizing Gower's multilingualism in favor of English only. Media alter messages, and early print "could not compete with the complexity and beauty of a medieval manuscript page" (188), Echard argues, and she supports her discussion neatly with five reproductions of pages from the manuscripts and books. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân. Published Echard, Siân. "Gower between Manuscript and Print." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 169-88. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis 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 Gower between Manuscript and Print. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Nafde identifies the features of Oxford, Bodleian MS Hatton 51 that derive from its printed exemplar, William Caxton's 1483 edition of the "Confessio Amantis" (STC 12142), exemplifying the interrelations of manuscript and print production in the late fifteenth century. While it is generally recognized that printers sought to imitate the look of manuscript pages, Nafde shows that the imitation could and did run the other way, at times very precisely. She identifies small errors that are obvious blunders in Caxton but reproduced in Hatton nonetheless, and discusses at greater length larger features such as Caxton's innovative table of contents and his Prologue, both reproduced by the Hatton scribe carefully. The table of contents includes locational folio numbers which necessitated that the scribe imitate Caxton's foliation throughout--an unusual feature in manuscripts. In reproducing Caxton's Prologue, Nafde tells us, the Hatton scribe appropriates one of the printer's "primary marketing techniques" (196)--his first-person claim of originality and uniqueness--which the scribe paradoxically reproduces without clarification, eliding the differences between printer and scribe. Tellingly, the scribe altered very few details of Caxton's presentation--slight adjustments to foliation for accuracy--and these alterations actually make the manuscript seem to "outdo its print exemplar" (194), Nafde asserts, in using features of early print. However, the scribe "also took advantage of the possibilities afforded by manuscript production," when he rubricated and decorated as he went along instead of awaiting post-print "hand-finishing" (198) as Caxton's technology required. In these ways, the Hatton manuscript exemplifies that "scribal practices were not just co-existing with print but being altered by it." The scribe, she tells us, "reproduced the look of the printed page . . . in order to bring the styles and practices of print to his manuscript" (190) in "an amalgamation of manuscript and print practices" . . . . that blurs the distinctions between the two forms of books, [and] tak[es] advantage of the shifting market for books" (200). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nafde, Aditi. Published Nafde, Aditi. "Gower from Print to Manuscript: Copying Caxton in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 51." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 189-200. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower from Print to Manuscript: Copying Caxton in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 51. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020