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 Brief biography of Gower; also contains separate entries for his individual works, e.g., CA, p. 182; MO, p.741; and VC, p. 828. [RFY2081]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Harvey, Sir Paul, ed. Published Harvey, Sir Paul, ed. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 3rd rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958, p. 331. Gower Subject Bibliographies, Reports, and Reference 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 Oxford Companion to English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1958 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Like so many reference works being produced in the past few decades, the volume contains a number of signed chapters on different point of focus around its broad topic. There are seven overall sections: I) Literary Production, II) Literary Consumption, III) Literature, Clerical and Lay, IV) Literary Realities, V) Complex Identities, VI) Literary Place, Space, and Time, and VII) Literary Journeys. Each contains five signed chapters, in addition to a prologue by Treharne ("Speaking of the Medieval") and an Epilogue by Walker ("When did the 'Medieval' End"). Most Gower scholars will be unsurprised to learn that Gower lags well behind mentions of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and even John Lydgate. Indeed, many of the references to Gower (and also to these other poets) are as part of the following lists of "usual suspects:" "Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate" (27, 112); "Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate" (29, 64, 589, 728); "Chaucer, Gower, and Langland" (61, 80); "Langland, Gower, Chaucer and Hoccleve" (489); "Chaucer, Langland, Gower, and Lydgate" (542), or just "Chaucer and Gower" (587). More detailed discussions of or allusions to Gower appear in several chapters, however. In "The Professionalization of Writing," Simon Horobin uses the "Trinity Gower" as an example of sorting out the different scribal hands in a "Confessio Amantis" manuscript and other contemporary texts (59-65). Similarly, Siân Echard, in "Insular Romance," goes into a brief discussion of Gower's trilingual oeuvre (162-63), and in "Writing Heresy, and the Anticlerical Muse," Mishtooni Bose goes into some detail about the participation of the "Vox Clamantis" in anticlerical tropes concerning land ownership (284) and use of a prophetic tone (291-92). Alison Wiggins includes Gower and his background in her discussion of London in "London Poets" (541-42); Ralph Hanna refers to him as a "gentryman" (127), and Stephen Kelly mentions his depiction of the 1380 rebels as "braying monsters" (371). [RAL. Copyright. John Gower Newsletter. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Treharne, Elaine, ed. Walker, Greg, ed. Green, William Green, assistant ed. Published Treharne, Elaine, and Greg Walker, with the assistance of William Green, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Gower Subject Background and General Criticism Bibliographies, Reports, and Reference Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Prints "Three Questions," CA, Book I, 3067-80; prose summary 3081-3238; 3239-34; omits 3244-45; 3246-3310; prose summary 3311-42; 3343-44; prose summary 3345-58; 3359-86; omits 3387-3421; 3422-25; apparently a reprinting of Macaulay. Includes a brief biography and an introduction that is generally critical of Gower for being "so desperately in earnest that he loses all sense of proportion." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hadow, G. E., and W. H. Hadow, eds. Published Hadow, G. E., and W. H. Hadow, eds. The Oxford Treasury of English Literature. 2nd ed. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907, 1:127-37. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Biography of Gower Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Oxford Treasury of English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1907 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Brief description of Gower as poet, his life and times, with pictures by Pre-Raphaelites. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Parrott, Edward. Published Parrott, Edward. The Pageant of English Literature. New York: Sully and Kleintelch; London: Nelson, 1914, pp. 123-28 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Pageant of English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1914 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Bennett, J. A. W. Published Bennett, J. A. W. The Parlement of Foules: An Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. Reprinted with corrections, 1965, 1971, pp. 9, 34, 44, 102, 138-39, 165, 182, 187, 195n, 197n, 198n, 206, 208. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Cinkante Balades Review Discusses aspects of CB and CA as analogues and contrasts to Chaucer's "Parliament of Fowls"; argues that PF and CA were mutually influential poems, in that they were made at approximately the same time, are concerned with dream allegory, and treat love as a central theme. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 Parlement of Foules: An Interpretation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1957 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Carlson demonstrates with persuasive detail that in its selection of incident (including its three-part structure) and in its attribution of cause and motive, Gower's Cronica Tripertita was based directly upon the official record of the parliamentary deposition of King Richard on 30 September 1399, supplemented by other sources, particularly but not exclusively for the events that followed the deposition, and when necessary by Gower's own powers of invention. Evidence of verbal borrowing, however, is very slight because of the incompatibility of the verbose, mannered, legalistic style of the official record and the demands of the rhyming leonine hexameters that Gower adopted – without any precedent – for the Cronica. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R Published Carlson, David R. "The Parliamentary Sources of Gower's Cronica Tripertita and Incommensurable Styles." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 98-111. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Cronica Tripertita Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Parliamentary Sources of Gower's Cronica Tripertita and Incommensurable Styles Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Book 4, Levin notes, devotes an unusually large number of lines to Amans' discourse on his love and his notions of "gentilesse." What his speeches reveal, she argues, is a condition of "suspended imaginative desire" based on his direct appropriation of the forms and vocabulary of the courtly lyric, a state that protects him from "aggressive sexuality" but that also insulates him from any fruitful communion with his lady. "Amans lives a lyric, condemning himself to desire without plot or ending. Yet throughout Book 4 he attempts a paradox: he seeks a text which would both eliminate narrative action and enable him to find himself miraculously gratified by his lady's favor, a lyric of love granted" (p. 117). His condition is manifested in several different ways. His attempt to create a narrative, in his reference to the story of Moses and the magic ring, reveals instead his "ambivalence toward his own desire and his underlying wish to forget aggressive sexuality" (p. 118). The series of vignettes with which he describes his courting, all in the present tense, contains no "advancing narrative" but shows "his dislocation from any real attempt to gain gratification from his lady" (p. 119). It also reveals his idea of "gentilesse," which is based more on courtly decorum and correct behavior than on virtuous character. And his borrowing from Ovid in 4.1210-17 "celebrates the condition of desire rather than his lady as the object of desire" (p. 119). The two principal works that he turns to for models for his behavior are RR and T&C, which "offer to Amans the notion that he may in some unspecified way conflate his imaginative experience as lyric persona with the narrative romance to attain the static lyric situation of love fulfilled for which he claims to long" (p. 122). In adopting imagery from RR, however, he "adapts its text to avoid its narrative" (p. 122), and in imitating Troilus, he "adopts a literary antecedant which does not inspire assertive love but instead gives him a precedent for his passivity" (p. 125). "Thus Gower shows how the forms of courtly poetry, however beautiful, betray Amans" (p. 126), and only gradually throughout the remainder of CA does Genius help Amans escape his trap by teaching him the broader and more important connotations of "gentilesse." [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 7.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Levin, Rozalyn Published Levin, Rozalyn. "The Passive Poet: Amans as Narrator in Book 4 of the Confessio Amantis." Essays in Medieval Studies: Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association 3 (1986), pp. 114-30. 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 Passive Poet: Amans as Narrator in Book 4 of the Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Unexamined. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Vogt, George McGill. Published Vogt, George McGill. "The Peasant in Middle English Literature." Ph.D. Dissertation. Harvard University, 1923. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Peasant in Middle English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1923 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 Stemmler here comments on Gower's "Vox Clamantis" (particularly the "Visio" of Book 1) as one among eleven examples of political poetry written in response to the Revolt of 1381, in all cases, emphasizing "political effect" while identifying "artistic techniques" that support the politics (22). He surveys "the most important historical facts about the Revolt" (23) and then divides the eleven poems into two group: seven that express the "voice of the disadvantaged," centering on verse letters attributed to John Ball, and four (including VC) in which the "political position reflects contemporary orthodox doctrines" (35) and the use of Latin indicates an educated and/or courtly audience. Stemmler treats each work in turn as they together represent a "broad spectrum of political convictions" (38), although he generally speaks more favorably of those on the political left. Concerning VC, he remarks on the "immense apparatus of political / rhetorical artifice and numerous quotations from Latin authors" (35) and how, in his view, "artistic methods are subservient to the [conservative] political intent" of Gower's poem (38). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stemmler, Theo. Published Stemmler, Theo. "The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 in Contemporary Literature." In Ulrich Broich, Theo Stemmler, and Gerd Stratmann, eds. Functions of Literature: Essays Presented to Erwin Wolff on His Sixtieth Birthday. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1984). Pp. 21-38. 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 Peasants' Revolt of 1381 in Contemporary Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Despite their obvious similarities, the vision of the Peasants' Revolt in Book 1 of VC and Chaucer's NPT "have never been compared systematically," Astell claims (p. 53), and she sets out to remedy the deficiency: Gower's dream of domestic animals acting like wild beasts becomes Chaucer's tale of a domestic animal who has a dream of a wild beast; Gower's introductory remarks on the truth of dreams is elaborated, with borrowings from homiletic sources, in Chaunticleer's long speech to Pertelote; both poets refer (directly or obliquely) to Jack Straw, to the fall of Troy, to a widow, to Fortune, and to Friday; and Gower's assertion that all misfortune is due to sin becomes in NPT the doctrine that Fortune favors those who help themselves. Astell's most interesting suggestion concerns the role of the cock in the two poems: a voice of warning in the visio, the cock anticipates the role of preacher and teacher that Gower assumes himself in the remainder of VC. Chaunticleer also recalls his creator, but as poet rather than as preacher. His role is singer rather than priest. He rejects his own prophetic vision and fails to discern the fox; later the fox is able to seize him by flattering his singing. Chaunticleer is able to turn to tables on the fox, however, as Chaucer is on the implications concerning his shortcomings as moral teacher: his tale finally offers a "moralite" on the need for moral alertness and social responsibility that in the end is not all that different from Gower's. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 17.1]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 188-95. Author/Editor Author/Editor Astell, Ann W Published Astell, Ann W. "The Peasants' Revolt: Cock-Crow in Gower and Chaucer." Essays in Medieval Studies: Proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association 10 (1993), pp. 53-64. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Peasants' Revolt: Cock-Crow in Gower and Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review McNally argues that Gower's CA does not "mix water and oil" in combining the penitential tradition with the poetry of courtly love. To make this point, McNally carefully traces the gradual historical convergence of these two types of literature. He first outlines the origin of the seven (sometimes eight) deadly sins, the introduction of penitential tracts and confessional manuals, the use of exempla collections in preaching, the adoption of the confession as a literary model, and finally the eventual parody of the whole penitential system in comic literature (74-81). Next, McNally looks at the religious aspects of courtly literature. He points out, for example, that there are some significant similarities between the penitent and the lover. Both have a desire to receive the "grace" (82) of the beloved and both suffer from sickness (caused by sin or love). Penance and love were thus intimately related. McNally then charts this overlap in troubadour poetry, Dante (especially the Purgatory), Chretien de Troyes, Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and a number of other writers. In Dante, for instance, "the domna of the troubadours, transfigured and idealized [as Beatrice], is reached by the lover whose progress upward to her begins with the act of purgation, involving confession and the Seven Deadly Sins, both of which have structural functions in the work" (84). The final link between love and penance comes in the genre of the dream vision. McNally provides an elaborate comparison between a dream from Bede's Ecclesiastical History and a vision (of the afterlife of lovers) from Andreas Capellanus' De Amore. While the latter is also indebted to the tradition of the epithalamium (with its locus amoenus), the similarities are striking. Indeed, many of the elements of the religious and courtly dream vision come together in Alan of Lille's De Planctu Naturae, a significant source for Gower (94). McNally concludes, therefore, that Gower was "following an established tradition in which the Seven Deadly Sins, the confession courtly praecepta, a court of love, a quasi-religious vision, the petition of and judgment of the god or goddess, the instruction of the poet-lover-penitent, and tales and exempla for the purposes of instruction are conventional devices" (94). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor McNally, John J Published McNally, John J. "The Penitential and Courtly Traditions in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Studies in Medieval Culture. Ed. Sommerfeldt, John R. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1964, pp. 74-94. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Penitential and Courtly Traditions in Gower's Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1964 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The "perfect age," according to Dove, is that vaguely defined period of middle age, which for medieval writers was a time of neither uncertainty nor mere transition but the prime of life, the period of gravitas as opposed to both iuventus and senectus. The first two parts of this book offer a survey of the imagery of the "perfect age" in medieval literature, drawing examples from earlier and later texts as well. In the last part, Dove discusses how the major poets of the Ricardian period invoke the conventional motif only to question it, and explore the individual's experience of living through the stages of his life rather than imposing an inherited pre?existing pattern. "The ageing process itself," she writes, "is one of Ricardian poetry's most characteristic matieres. For Gower, in Confessio Amantis, it is the most exciting avanture of all" (p. 126). In her short chapter on Gower (pp. 125?33) Dove analyzes the stages of Amans' growth into realization and Gower's use of first? and third?person narration in his account. Along the way, she takes issue with both Burrow's and Lewis' emphasis on Amans' discovery of the limitations of his old age. Like Langland's Dreamer, Amans crosses directly from iuventus to senectus, but unlike Langland, "Gower represents the threshold between the two ages as a place where consciousness of self begins" (p. 130). With "consciousness of self" comes reincorporation into the "created world" and a release from the bonds of age?decorum. At the same time, Gower "re?defines the series of the ages. Senectus as grief and loss and nakedness is experienced only during the time of transition from one age to the next, in a swoon. The age which comes after myhty youthe is an age of rest and ease and peace, an age which anticipates a calm, unadventurous transition to the eighth age of the world, the age which is, as Ambrose says, 'una et perpetua'--not a stage but a lasting state" (p. 132)--in other words, the "perfect age."] [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dove, Mary Published Dove, Mary. "The Perfect Age of Man's Life." Cambridge: Cambridge Uuiversity Press, 1986 ISBN 0521325714 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 Perfect Age of Man's Life. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cambridge Uuiversity Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Discusses and categorizes characters according to "personation or figuration. Through personation a conceptual value is embodied in a personage. The most familiar form of this mode is personification, which Gower makes elaborate use of in" MO. "His delineation, however, of such personages as Genius and Amans in" CA "reveals quite clearly that personation is not always a matter of simple personification. Figuration begins with a particular person, whether historical or legendary. Through this mode, some kind of conceptual value becomes associated, even identified, with the personage. The rebels in the" VC "not only do monstrous deeds; they are monsters." [RFY1982; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cowling, Samuel Taggart, III. Published Cowling, Samuel Taggart, III. The Personages in the Major Narrative Works of John Gower. Ph.D. Dissertation. Michigan State University, 1970. Freely accessible at https://d.lib.msu.edu/etd/39752; accessed October 6, 2022 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Backgrounds and General Criticism Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) 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 The Personages in the Major Narrative Works of John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review As her title indicates, Burke argues that Gower's "Cinkante Balades" was written following a model established by Christine de Pizan in her "Cent Balades." "This discovery is important for Christine studies, as it affirms an example of her influence on the world stage beginning as early as 1398, when her 'Cent Balades' must have already been known to readers in France, as well as carried to England (in a manuscript that has not survived) by John Montague, Earl of Salisbury" (172). "For Gower studies," she states, "this discovery of filiation is a game-changer" (172). Her argument rests on two points: dates of 1398 for the "Cent Balades" (so that Salisbury could bring them with him from France to England) and 1399 for the "Cinkante Balades"; and that Christine's and Gower's works share a "common plan" (177)--"almost exactly the same blueprint" (178). She takes both works as inspired by love, and reads "Cinkante Balades" I-IV as "a personal tribute to their author's happy proposal of marriage and his joy at the acceptance of his bride" (182), finding in IIII* "anaphora that rings forth the constancy of joyful love" (183), relating it to the Song of Songs (184). She concludes, "Although Gower's collection in no way surpassed the youthful genius of Christine in her 'Cent balades,' he created a worthy tribute to her legacy of moral lyrics composed in many voices, but united in diversity by the theme of love" (184). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burke, Linda. Published In Genèses et filiations dans l'oeuvre de Christine de Pizan, ed. Dominique Demartini and Claire le Ninan (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021), pp. 171-84. Gower Subject Cinkante Balades 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 Personal as Political. John Gower's "Cinkante balades" as English Response to the "Cent balades" of Christine de Pizan. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Wagenknecht, Edward. Published Wagenknecht, Edward. The Personality of Chaucer. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968, pp. 24, 53, 58, 68, 115-16, 144. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review Gower as Chaucer's friend, moral and poetic critic, a pacifist, a writer of love poetry who, like Chaucer, felt he may have been a bit too fond of love-poetry in his youth; if Chaucer was "hitting at" Gower in Man of Law's Prologue, he was hitting "below the belt." [RFY1981; rev. MA] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Personality of Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A. Published Peck, Russell A.. "The Phenomenology of Make Believe in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Studies in Philology 91 (1994), pp. 250-69. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Peck examines the dialogue between Genius and Amans in terms of medieval phenomenology -- most generally, the speculation about the relation between the outer world and the images formed thereof in the mind, and about the ways in which the mind understands what it does not see -- as reflected in such authors as Chaucer and Langland as well as Boethius, Hugh of St. Victor, and late medieval English mystics. By this analysis, Genius' tales are images presented for Amans' contemplation, fictions designed to provide access to the truth, while Amans' perceptions and interpretations are shaped by his pre-existing fantasy, another sort of fiction that interferes with the search for truth. At issue also are different kinds of love: for the English mystics, love provided the only means to move beyond phenomena directly to their source, but Amans' naturatus amor merely creates desires that distort all his perceptions. Peck examines the "eyes and ears" passage in Book 1, the discussion of Falssemblant and Supplantation near the end of Book 2, and the discussion of Sorcery in Book 6 in order to show how perception and misperception -- expecially that governed by desire -- and the relation between exterior and interior phenomena are treated as moral issues in Genius' lessons, and how Genius attempts to reorder Amans by providing him with new images, the proper significance of which Amans stubbornly resists. Like the victims of Nectanabus' sorcery, Amans is not the victim of deceit exempt by his own choice. At the end of the poem, the poet sets aside his own Nectanabus-like role -- as creator of images-- at the same time that Amans becomes the supplicant for the welfare of England: "Knowing that he cannot effect change in his audience (only they can do that), he dramatizes instead a change from naturatus amor to caritas within himself, and takes another name -- John Gower" (p. 267). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 14.1] 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 Phenomenology of Make Believe in Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1994 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Previously published in Studies in Philology 91 (1994): 250-69; previosuly reviewed in JGN 14.1. Briefly, Peck examines some of the differences between Genius and Amans--the exemplary tales of the former versus the fantasies of the penitent, and their opposing notions of love--in terms of medieval speculations about the relation between the outer world and the images formed in the mind, and describes Genius' attempt to reorder Amans with new images, the proper significance of which Amans resists. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A. Published Peck, Russell A.. "The Phenomenology of Make-Believe in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Ashville, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 49-66. 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 Phenomenology of Make-Believe in Gower's Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Argues that Gower and Chaucer both wrote in the "King's English," i.e., the "the language that had formed itself in the Court about the person of the monarch." First edition published in 1871. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Earle, John. Published Earle, John. The Philology of the English Tongue. 5th ed., rev. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892, pp. 68-69, 74-75 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Philology of the English Tongue. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1892 1871 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Corsa summarizes earlier views of the relationship between PhysT and Gower's "Virginia" in her account of the analogues of Chaucer's tale (pp. 4- 8). She describes Gower's version as a "more or less faithful paraphrase of Livy" (p. 7) and emphasizes the "political moral" of the tale and the lesson on the king's need for self-control, citing Fisher (1964) and Peck (1978). "Scholars generally agree," she writes, that Gower's "can be neither source nor scion" of PhysT (p. 7), and she suggests that the two poets wrote their separate versions "perhaps almost simultaneously" (p. 3). Her "Survey of Criticism" (pp. 28-41) includes references to several earlier comparisons of the two tales (pp. 29-30, 32 and 38), and Gower is mentioned in the notes to lines 5, 35, 122, 139-64, and 240. Judging on the basis of the references to Gower, the index to this volume is not complete, and though Carol Weiher's article on "Chaucer's and Gower's Stories of Lucretia and Virginia" (ELN, 14 [1976], 7-9) is mentioned on p. 5, it is not included in either the index or the bibliography. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 7.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Corsa, Helen Storm, ed. Published Corsa, Helen Storm, ed. "The Physician's Tale." A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer., 2, part 17 . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987 Gower Subject 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 Physician's Tale. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Oklahoma Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Burrow looks at authorial self-depictions in a selection of late fourteenth-century poets, including--at various lengths--Langland, Cynewulf, Laʒamon, Thomas Malory, Thomas Hoccleve, and William Dunbar. Chaucer and Gower are, however, his greater focus. As a starting point, he looks at the "autobiographical" passage of William Langland's "Piers Plowman" (62), identifying it as the genre of "petition," specifically on the other's behalf. His overall argument is that this genre underlies references in works of this period that are read as "autobiography" since, in his view the latter is not ultimately a late-medieval genre. Chaucer and Gower move the petition form away from overt requests for material support to more subtle poetic ends. Burrow notes that the petitionary self-identification of Amans as John Gower in "Confessio Amantis," Book VIII is entirely part of the fictive frame--an advance on the generic type. Rather than Gower the poet petitioning a reader, Gower the character is petitioning Venus, another character (69). Burrow finds that, in contrast to Hoccleve or others, a petitionary mode was not especially common in Chaucer's work. He sees authorial petitions in "Fortune," "The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse, and "Lenvoy to Scogan," This last he labels "a real petition" (70), with the understanding that its vagueness would be understood by the actual Scogan. Burrow argues that Chaucer is balancing that actual petition with a complicated byplay similar to Gower's "senex amans" move in the CA. Burrow then looks for the petition type more fictively in the "House of Fame," "Legend of Good Women," and occasionally in the "Canterbury Tales." He sees scenes like Chaucer's petition to Queen Alceste in the prologue to the "Legend of Good Women" as a fictive version of a "court scene of complaint and petition" (72), ultimately creating a focus on the author's humility and self-deprecation. Ultimately Burrow concludes that fictive depictions of petition by Gower and Chaucer "display a certain playfulness" (75) on the part of Ricardian poets. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burrow, John A. Published Burrow, John A. "The Poet as Petitioner." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981): 61-75. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poet as Petitioner. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower's eight-syllable line is suitable only for the barest narrative; CA is "hamstrung" by the attempt to join love and the confession form. Author/Editor Author/Editor Coghill, Nevill. Published Coghill, Nevill. The Poet Chaucer. London: Oxford University Press, 1949. Reprinted with selective reading lists, 1950, 1955, 1960; with corrections, 1961, 1964, pp. 54, 114. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poet Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1949 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Fison suggests that Gower's CA lacks the kind of structural or allegorical complexity that "delights young Empsonians" (16), and as a result Gower is largely out of fashion today. Neither are Gower's politics particularly controversial, and he is at his most interesting when he depicts the psychology of love. Gower's style "tends to preserve a smoothness of approach by lines whose effects complement each other, so that the impression left by the whole exceeds that of the individual parts" (19). Gower reminds Fison most of Dryden, not only in his restrained use of language or his "architectonic sense" (23), but especially in way he concludes the CA with a "sad nobility" (23). Throughout the article, Fison compares Gower with Chaucer, and while the latter comes off as more varied and versatile, Gower is still praised for "his technical command of the language" (25). The result of Gower's measured style is a sense of universality, openness, and tolerance. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fison, Peter Published Fison, Peter. "The Poet in John Gower." Essays in Criticism 8 (1958), pp. 16-26. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poet in John Gower Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1958 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Irvin, Matthew Published Irvin, Matthew. "The Poetic Voices of John Gower: Politics and Personae in the Confessio Amantis." Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013 ISBN 9781843842507 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review "The Poetic Voices of John Gower" is an ambitious, wide-ranging, and inclusive study of the characters and tales in CA. The book is a handsome Brewer production of 315 pages, which includes a brief introduction (Chapter 1: "Making and Doing Love"), seven chapters on various issues in the CA, a conclusion ("Identifying Amans"), full bibliography, and even fuller Index. Irvin chiefly explores the characters and stories of the CA from the standpoint of Amans, central persona of Gower the author, but it soon emerges that Amans, whose chief object is his lady, has different goals and objectives from the "Gower" who seeks to guide and educate. Irvin examines the various persons of the CA with help from a philosophical approach based on Brunetto Latini's adaptation of Aristotle's "Ethics," especially the qualities of right reason, prudence, and wisdom: qualities that emerge especially from Gower the author (so to speak). Irvin discovers that the allegedly trustworthy issues of romance literature, including his CA--the topics of "fin amour," love generally, "trouthe," "pite," reason, and others--are not stable and steadfast but contingent, requiring education, negotiation, and interpretation. As Irvin puts it with respect to love, seemingly a universal quality: "the place of love in the world depends on the relationship of prudence and art" (1). Although Irvin treats many characters and situations in the CA, his principal interest is in Amans and his identification as a persona for Gower. He argues that "Gower's poetry dramatizes the intellectual and emotional action of finding his proper place in the world, of making his own presence as writer part of the prudential, political world about which he writes" (27). Hence the personae Irvin analyzes are not just literary characters but, in Maitland's terms, "Moral Personality and Legal Personality." Explaining the relevance of this formulation to the CA, Irvin says: "Gower employs the legal discourse of the persona to bring together prudence and art, wisdom and affect, in a manner that differentiates his work formally from Latini's" (15). According to Irvin's formulations, the personal is the political. The chapters of "The Poetic Voices of John Gower" are well organized and well provided with subheadings. Chap. 2, for example, is titled "The Orientation of the Prologue to the Confessio Amantis," with subheadings "Gower's Double Readership" (clerical and non-clerical audience), "The Failure of Interpretation," and "Arion and the Possibility of Good Government." Irvin does not examine every story in the CA equally. Some merit more detailed discussions than others. Tales that evoke considerable discussion include "The Tale of Florent," in Chap. 3 ("Amorous Persons"); "The Tale of Constance" and "The Tale of Canace and Machaire," Chap. 4 ("Pity and the Feminine"); and "The Tale of Apollonius," Chap. 7 ("The love of Kings"). In his chapter dealing chiefly with "The Tale of Florent," Irvin argues that Gower challenges readers' sense of morality regarding "gentilesse," producing contradictory interpretations that readers, using prudence and wisdom, must decide for themselves. In the following chapter, on Constance and the moral qualities of "pite," the story occasions a "tension" between "duty" and "affect"--requiring that readers sort out the tangle of emotions which the "Tale of Constance" elicits. Irvin's most persistent discussions involve the personae of Gower and Amans or Gower as Amans. Things come together especially in the Conclusion, "Identifying Amans," when Irvin focuses on Book 8, the denouement. In this book, toward the close, as is conventional, Gower discloses his name to Venus in Book 8. This self-disclosure was a staple of French romance literature, of course. Jean de Meun provides his name (in a "prediction") in his continuation of "Le Roman de la rose," which Gower remembers and in some ways answers in his CA. Irvin does not read humorously Venus's explanation to Amans/Gower that he is inappropriate as a lover. Instead, he reads it as a moment of education, of wisdom and schooling, when Amans finally comes to know himself: "Through the knowledge and art of his 'scole,' of this education, Gower's readers can truly know their own personae, and act prudently" (285). A key point about Amans and his education is that any man, any human, cannot and does not act solely on good advice, even if the advice is particularly fitting. In the CA and with the depiction of Amans, there is a concession to humanity and its propensity to sin; it is part of the human condition. As Irvin puts it, referring to the letter that Amans writes to Venus and Cupid pleading for their help: "The letter is a failure for Amans but a success for Gower" (283). That formulation epitomizes Gower's double readership of the CA and the relationship of the persona Amans to the poet John Gower. Amans is a student who must be schooled; Gower is a tutor whose goal, as auctor, is to educate and provide context. Irvin places the letter, and the conclusion of the CA generally, in a very human perspective. Irvin can interpret on several levels, and his close reading often operates on the level of the word. A good example is his discussion of word play in a passage bristling with rime riche from the Prologue. The passage concerns the "wise" and those who "pleye" in a sequence which concerns the meeting of Richard II and "Gower" rendered in a rhetoric display of antanaclasis: So as I made my byheste / To make a book after his heste, / And witte in suche a maner wise / Which may be wisdom to the wise / And pley to hem that luste to pleye (Prologue 81-85*). Irvin explains how the equivocation of the word play, expressed in "antanaclasis" helps support his reading of the CA as a poem working through contingencies--here in a passage concerning dream interpretation. Some may read the passage in the manner of the wise; some may read it in a context of "pleye." The "wisdom to the wise" would seem to be Irvin's clerical readership; the "pley to hem that luste to pleye" would seem to be those who fail to grasp the deeper meaning. The point of the Prologue, according to Irvin, is to trace the world's contingent status to human duplicity and falseness (like Chaucer in his "The Former Age"). Everything is insincere and untrustworthy, including human and political relationships. Even interpretation (hermeneutics) has been infected and compromised. "Therefore, 'wisdom' of the Prologue," argues Irvin, "is not given as doctrine, but is used to stir up emotions by pointing out humanity's own failure to be wise. Prudence has failed, and Gower's art imitates the frustration of the wise observer, the observer who hears the 'vox populi,' and who knows 'lore'" (67). The strength of Irvin's book is its presentation of Gower and his persona as Amans. He chronicles the complexities of the figure who learns about worldly contingency and finally absorbs Venus's lessons, such as they are. Gower scholars are fortunate to possess this extended meditation on Amans and personae. [James M. Dean. Copyright. JGN 33.1]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poetic Voices of John Gower: Politics and Personae in the Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D. S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Prints "In Praise of Peace"; citing John Urry's edition, 1721. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bell, John, printer. Published Bell, John, printer. The Poetical Works of Geoff. Chaucer in Fourteen Volumes: The Miscellaneous Pieces from Urry's edition 1721, The Canterbury Tales from Tyrwhitt's edition 1775. Edinburg: Apollo Press, 1782. Vol. XIII, pp. 139-53. Gower Subject In Praise of Peace 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 The Poetical Works of Geoff. Chaucer in Fourteen Volumes: The Miscellaneous Pieces from Urry's Edition 1721, The Canterbury Tales from Tyrwhitt's Edition 1775. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1782 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Nolan's focus is on Book I of the "Vox Clamantis," first deemed the "Visio" by Maria Wickert, who showed that it was composed later than the six Books following, which were subsequently attached. Her argument is a wide-ranging one, and difficult to summarize. At its core is the idea that the Rising of 1381 acted on Gower as a kind of personal and aesthetic crucible, out of which he came to forge a poetics altogether new and different from that which governs the "Mirour de l'Omme" and the last six Books of VC. This early poetic Nolan terms "a Boethian account of the relation between self and society, individual and community, dramatized in part by a dialogue between the narrator and Wisdom" (p. 113), and she says it is present alongside a parallel Ovidan account in the "Visio." By "Boethian" Nolan apparently has in mind Gower's sense of the poet as guardian of the established social and cosmic orders--the Gower, in other words, of "comun profit" who speaks from a disembodied space and time. At one edge, this "Boethian" voice is (or seems to be) the "vox clamantis in deserto" persona most commonly recognized by traditional Gowerian scholarship. Nolan, however, offers several dualities by way of illustrating her point."Boethian/Ovidian" is just one; she also makes use of "the poetics of attachment/detachment" and "the poetics of disclosure and closure" (passim., but see especially p. 132), all of which seem to translate into Gower's recognition that the best poetry must involve the heart as well as the head. She like others sees in the "Visio" the Ovidian cento and, by much thoughtful and pointed analysis of selected passages shows that, for the majority of Gower's readers as for Gower himself, those centonic excerpts would have conjured up their original Ovidian context, and hence Ovid's passionate embrace of things living. The effect of this is to "puncture the surface of the poem, producing openings in the text through which readers can access Ovid's verse in all of its complexity and multivalence" (p. 115). Ovid thereafter comes to represent the involvement of the poet's emotions with his art, the healing value of which (both for poet and for society at large) in Nolan's view Gower is forced to discover by the violence of 1381. She keys on the emergence of Arion at the end of the "Visio," treating it as a bridge to the larger figure in CA, and also most persuasively as evidence of Gower's developing sense of himself as man and poet, whose emotions have significance, not only to him, but also as a means of uniting all living things in common purpose and harmony, i.e., Arion's music. Gower comes to see this as a way not merely to heal society, but to improve it. In the "Visio," Nolan finds him working this out--and recognizing his kinship as a poet even with the peasants at their most bestial: "The Rising, too, is kind of disclosure; it is a form of resistence to the closure embodied in social hierarchy and repression. It revealed possibilities; it exposed injustices; it opened closed doors and disclosed emblems of power within. Gower's poetics of disclosure is called into being by the demands of the peasants for self-determination; his narrator is created by the crisis the rebels brought about. Their demands were shocking--not least, Gower suggests, because self-determination was the obsession of clerks and poets" (p. 133). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society JGN 30.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nolan, Maura Published Nolan, Maura. "The Poetics of Catastrophe: Ovidian Allusion in Gower's 'Vox Clamantis'." In In Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann. Ed. Cannon, Christopher and Nolan, Maura. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011, pp. 113-33. ISBN 9781843842637 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poetics of Catastrophe: Ovidian Allusion in Gower's 'Vox Clamantis' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D.S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Putter describes his aim as a consideration of "the use of the word 'thing' in a range of Middle English writings (Gower, Chaucer and mystical authors)." He "argues that the vagueness of the word can paradoxically be a source of strength. Gower in his "Confessio Amantis" and Chaucer in "Troilus and Criseyde" use 'thing' with a lively sense of its power to conceal and tantalize, and in mystical writings and Chaucer's 'Second Nun's Tale' its blankness becomes suggestive of the darkness of God." (63). Putter is particularly intriguing in his application of Derrida's notion of "true secrets," Lacan's 'l'objet petit a," and Žižek's argument that the "paradox of desire" is that if "we mistake for postponement of the 'thing itself' what is already 'the thing itself,' we mistake for the searching and indecision of desire what is, in fact, the realization of desire," (68); and equally if not more informative in his animadversions on the meanings of "thing" apparent in Middle English usage. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Putter, Ad Published Putter, Ad. "The Poetry of 'Things' in Gower, 'The Great Gatsby,' and Chaucer." In The Construction of Textual Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Literature. Ed. Ghose, Indira, and Renevey, Denis. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2009, pp. 63-82. ISBN 9783823365204 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poetry of 'Things' in Gower, 'The Great Gatsby,' and Chaucer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Gunter Narr Verlag, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower was a friend and contemporary of Chaucer, one who could write good poetry and who deserved the label "moral"; he was "ponderously learned"; the reference to Chaucer in Gower's MO possibly dates "Troilus and Criseyde" as written before 1377; CA is an example of a loose collection of the short tales which were popular in the Middle Ages. [RFY1981; rev. MA]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Root, Robert K. Published Root, Robert K. The Poetry of Chaucer: A Guide to Its Study and Appreciation. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906. Rev. ed. 1922, 11-12, 13, 26, 33, 75, 88, 124, 127, 137, 151, 183, 184, 240, 242, 252, 284. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poetry of Chaucer: A Guide to Its Study and Appreciation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1906 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 knew "nothing whatever" about astronomy; wrote on royal command; CA is a representative of the medieval "collection" genre, along with "Decameron" and "Metamorphoses"; Gower shifts political loyalties; Gower is a source for Chaucer's Physician." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gardner, John. Published Gardner, John. The Poetry of Chaucer. Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977, pp. xii, xvi, 96, 191, 224, 264, 269, 297. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Gower's Influence and Later Allusion 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 Poetry of Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bland considers Gower's artistic merits by looking at three stories: the tales of Ceix and Alceone (Book 4), Jason and Medea (Book 5), and Lucrece (Book 7). The first of these stories demonstrates Gower's skill in linking all scenes with natural transitions: "Gower is forced into using none of the clichés which Chaucer employs in linking the parts of his version" (286). Gower is also less melodramatic, avoids digressions, and prefers action over conversation and thought. At the same time, he includes some "delightful" (287) poetic touches, as when he describes the floor of Sleep's house as being strewn with dreams (287). The story of Jason and Medea further demonstrates Gower's "metrical skill" (287). His use of the caesura and enjambment results in lines that show "briskness and vigour" (287). Gower's "unadorned directness of style" (288) lacks Chaucer's "frequent brutal abruptness" (287) and demonstrates instead the clarity and polite speech of aristocratic society. Not only does Gower show "classical" (288) restraint where Chaucer has "tap-room vigour" (288), but Gower is also a romantic. He loves exotic and mysterious locations and he is deeply interested in Medea's magic. In describing the latter, Gower quickens the pace by introducing trochaic lines among the iambic ones. Lastly, the tale of Jason and Medea reveals Gower's mastery of the verse paragraph (288). In the next section, Bland compares Gower's tale of Lucrece with Shakespeare's version. Where Shakespeare's story is "a psychological study" (289), Gower focuses on action. Bland observes that "at the time when Gower wrote men were not in position to understand fully the nuances of character and of personal relationships, except under the guise of allegory" (289). Bland ends with some comments on the framework of the CA. Given courtly love's conventional emphasis on adulterous passion, it is inevitable that Book 8 is a kind of recantation. However, Gower becomes anti-climactic when he follows up his revelation of Amans's old age with a didactic prayer for the state of England. Gower's flaw, then, is that he is a good teller of stories, but lacks the "genius" and "intelligence to support a long poem" (290). He ranks second to Chaucer as "a master of a plain style" (290), despite the fact that he is often merely prosaic. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bland, D. S Published Bland, D. S. "The Poetry of John Gower." English 6 (1948), pp. 286-290. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poetry of John Gower Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1948 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review A discursive bibliography of Gower materials, covering years 1960-1983, with sub-sections on Editions and Translations, Bibliographies, Biographies and Portraits, Language Studies and Stylistics, Source Studies, Critical Studies, and Future Directions. Observes that the "volume and quantity of recent scholarship points toward a growing audience of informed readers at many levels" (3). However, "Gower studies have yet to be launched fully" (19), particularly because relatively "little work has been done on the poetry in languages other than Middle English" (20). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, Robert F. Published Yeager, Robert F. "The Poetry of John Gower: Important Studies, 1960-1983." In Robert F. Yeager, ed. Fifteenth-Century Studies: Recent Essays. Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1984, pp. 3-28. Gower Subject Bibliographies, Reports, and Research Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poetry of John Gower: Important Studies, 1960-1983. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower's works examined in light of didactic, rhetorical, and homiletic traditions. Gower fully didactic in intent, approach, and content. Author/Editor Author/Editor Olsson, Kurt O. Published Olsson, Kurt O. The Poetry of John Gower: The Art of Moral Rhetoric. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1969. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poetry of John Gower: The Art of Moral Rhetoric. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review It is no news to Gowerians that R. F. Yeager values Gower's poetry, but this essay articulates why he thinks everyone should do so, summarized in his closing comment: "what ought to distinguish Gower the Poet, with his fluency in three languages, Italianate ambition and, as his output suggests, indefatigable energy, is his repeated insistence in work after work that poetry should serve society. Poetry should make things better. If a poet fulfilled his role well--and readers read with care--then poetry probably did" (492). Yeager neither ignores nor shrugs off comparison with Chaucer--that recurrent motif of much Gower criticism and commentary--but opens it out at points to comparisons with Dante, with Langland, and with Milton, and uses these comparisons to establish the depth of Gower's desire for lasting poetic fame ("Italianate ambition"), his audience awareness, his social politics, and his multiple voices (trilingualism, "vox populi," "vox clamantis," open "speak[ing] to power" [487], "English vocal range" [491], etc.). Yeager considers form as meaning in Gower's three major works and in a range of less frequently considered ones: "In Praise of Peace," "Cinkante Balades" XLIII, and, from among the shorter Latin poems, "Quicquid homo scribat," "Est amor," "Ecce, patet tensus," and the possibly spurious "Eneidos bucolis." In these readings, Yeager attends to Gower's biography, linguistic subtleties, narrative and prosodic techniques, sources, historical contexts, critical traditions, and more. Notable, too, are Yeager's recurrent enlivening glimpses of Gower as a person when, for example, "[i]magining Gower imagining" his audience before taking "quill or stylus in hand" (481), when observing moments of personal sorrow and "grace" (486) in Gower's Latin lyrics, or when showing that "even when harnessed for service most public poetry was, for Gower, a living means of self-expression as well" (487). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. " Published Yeager, R. F. "The Poetry of John Gower." In Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell; 2010. Pp. 476-95. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poetry of John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Peck summarizes the argument on the relation between personal and political governance in all of Gower's work, particularly in CA, that he first put forth in his "Kingship and Common Profit" in 1978: "Gower conceives of the hypostasis between the personal and social through images of kingship, domain, and right rule. Each--the social and the personal--is contingent upon the other and operates through metaphoric interdependence. The king of England is akin to the king of the soul; the state of England is linked to one's sense of personal domain; and right rule is mirrored simultaneously through both sides of the equation" (216). In the longer, second part of his essay, Peck traces Gower's commentary on the effects of royal misrule through VC, MO, TC, and "IPP," and he offers a new attempt to read the dedication of CA to "Henry of Lancaster" as a rejection of King Richard II motivated by Richard's dispute with the city of London in 1392 (cf. Fisher, 116-22). (The reasons for the second dedication are an issue on which Gower scholars are not yet of a single mind. For an assortment of views, see in the same volume pp. 26, 57, 61, 94 n. 45, and 159.) [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A Published Peck, Russell A. "The Politics and Psychology of Governance in Gower: Ideas of Kingship and Real Kings." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 215-38. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Cronica Tripertita In Praise of Peace Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Politics and Psychology of Governance in Gower: Ideas of Kingship and Real Kings Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "The Politics of Strengthe and Vois in Gower's Loathly Lady Tale." In The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs. Ed. Passmore, S. Elizabeth and Carter, Susan. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 42-72. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Gower's "Tale of Florent" is aptly suited for the purposes of instruction of Amans, Yeager notes, but it has more than a single target. Book 1 is not only drawn almost exclusively from classical sources; it is marked by the "clear effort Gower made to situate his narratives historically" (p. 45), mostly in the ancient past. In conjunction with the use of Latin for the verse headings and marginalia and the choice of Roman deities for the frame, the insistent antiquity of the stories helps lend authority to Gower's vernacular text. But it also, Yeager suggests, serves as a way of blunting and camouflaging--self-protectively--the poet's direct critique of his contemporaries, another of the purposes of the poem which Gower sets out expressly in his Prologue. The "historical matrix" for the tales is provided by Nebuchadnezzar's statue, which "helps reinforce just how far distant from the present they are to be taken" (p. 47) but also helps direct the attention of alert readers to the comparison of past and present, with all of the statue's implications of degeneration and decay; and to emphasize the relation, Yeager points out that Book 1 includes tales that can be matched to each of the five ages that the diverse materials of the statue represent. The marginal gloss firmly sets "Florent" as a Roman tale, from the "Age of Brass." The analogues suggest that this must have been Gower's deliberate choice, and the purpose, Yeager suggests, has to do with the tale's implicit "political critique" (p. 50). Though set in the past, the tale still concerns a knight and knighthood; and the "primary dichotomy" in the tale, unique to Gower's version, is between "obedience" and "strength" (CA 1.1401-2), "precisely the problematic facing the barony" in an age that was rife with "Murmur and Complaint" (p. 53). After Florent has demonstrated his strength in his successful combat with Branchus, it is "through his gentility . . . that the 'grantdame' (CA I.1445) perceives a means to neutralize Florent's combat potential" (p. 53), and "strengthe," from this point in the tale on, shifts from the purely physical to the inner strength manifested in Florent's "trouthe." At the same time, Gower emphasizes the "division" in Florent's struggle with the alternatives that he faces. These are resolved with his surrender to his lady and his decision to grant her "myn hole vois" (CA 1.1828). "For the first time since his quarrel began, Florent's quarreling inner voices are silenced at the prospect of reintegration. 'Bothe on,' the two will speak with a single 'vois,' and by this at last grow 'hole'" (p. 55). The construction of this scene recalls both the political (e.g. in the 'commun vois') and the apocalyptic significance that Gower attaches to "voice" in both CA and in his other works, notably in the Vox Clamantis, and again extends the tale beyond its merely literal application. "The political message of 'The Tale of Florent' is, . . . on one level, that the knightly class has only to gain by ceding sovereignty to where it rightly belongs" (p. 58), but "the political applicability [of the tale] extends to all whose Pride has led to Murmur and Complaint, and outright Inobedience to established sovereign rule" (p. 59). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.2] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Politics of Strengthe and Vois in Gower's Loathly Lady Tale Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Views Amans in the context of the tradition of the ages of man, of the "dits amoreux" of Machaut and Froissart, and considers the purpose and effects of the lover's age as revealed in the conclusion. [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burrow, John Published Burrow, John. "The Portrayal of Amans in Confessio Amantis." In Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Ed. Minnis, A. J. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983, pp. 5-24. ISBN 085991142X Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Portrayal of Amans in Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D.S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review ["In the three and a half decades since the publication of Ariès's seminal work, Centuries of Childhood, our understanding of Western European medieval notions of right relations between parents and children has changed significantly. . . . In the context of the post-Ariès vision of medieval attitudes toward parents and children, this dissertation examines the works of three English poets of the late fourteenth century, Chaucer, Gower, and the Pearl-poet. . . . All three poets, while presenting relations between parents and children that reflect with some degree of realism contemporary assumptions about familial bonds, also idealize children, often associating them with the miraculous. In Pearl such idealization takes its grandest form, as the poet places the death of a child in the context of Christian Resurrection. In the Confessio Amantis Gower's strongest tales include scenes of anagnorisis, in which children restore parents to new life. In the works of Chaucer, the poet employs the idealized child in the widest variety of contexts; miracles range from a small act of generosity to an instance of Christian transcendance. As the dissertation demonstrates, each of the three poets presents, against a background of real relations between parents and children in this world, a vision of the child, in his or her rejection of such sublunary concerns, triumphant." [JGN 15.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bauer, Kate A. Published Bauer, Kate A.. "The Portrayal of Parents and Children in the Works of Chaucer, Gower, and the Pearl-poet." PhD thesis, New York University, 1995. 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 Portrayal of Parents and Children in the Works of Chaucer, Gower, and the Pearl-poet Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Lee makes a multi-pronged attempt to redeem Chaucer's Physician's Tale from the unfavorable judgment of earlier criticism, and uses the comparison to Gower's tale of Virginia to bolster his case (pp. 144-46). Gower reveals by contrast some of the most outstanding qualities of Chaucer's version. Gower maintains the "overtly political purpose" of the tale, while Chaucer transforms "a pagan political anecdote into a Christian moral exemplum." Chaucer emphasizes the pathos of the situation; Gower eschews pathos and any attention to character, "and so does not rise above the anecdotal level." The comparison also reveals some of the strengths of Chaucer's retelling: he provides a more credible motivation to the villainous judge and demonstrates his contempt for justice more vividly; he portrays Virginia's virtue singlemindedly, and strengthens the narrative by omitting reference to her betrothal; and he effectively invokes pity in the conclusion, a quality explicitly excluded by Gower, who attributes Virginius' action to his irrational despair. Lee's essay also contains an interesting discussion of the "moral logic" of Chaucer's version and ts relation to FrankT and PardT, which precede and follow. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lee, Brian S. Published Lee, Brian S.. "The Position and Purpose of the Physician's Tale." Chaucer Review 22 (1987), pp. 141-160. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Position and Purpose of the Physician's Tale. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Hudson considers Gower alongside of Chaucer, Trevisa, and Langland in her chapter on "The Context of Vernacular Wycliffism," in this detailed and in many respects eye-opening new survey of the growth and influence of the Lollard movement (pp. 408-11). Gower seems to have had little knowledge of the details of Wycliffe's doctrine, she concludes, though he criticizes Lollardy in CA (Prol. and Book 5) and in the later Carmen super Multiplici Viciorum Pestilencia for the threat it poses to the unity of the faith. She also perceives a modification of Gower's own criticism of the church between Book 3 of VC and the composition of CA. The former contains some substantial anticlerical satire; in CA, however, Gower has evidently become more circumspect, and the passages on the failings of the church are "muted" and relatively short. ronically, Gower later dedicated a copy of VC to Archbishop Arundel, who as the scourge of the Lollards came to take even such criticism of the church as Gower offers as exceptionable; and as Macaulay noted, despite his own defense of orthodoxy, Gower seems to come very close to advocating the Wycliffite doctrine of dominion. Hudson's entire book is of interest as background to Gower, if only because the richness of her survey makes clear how far removed the poet was from the actual theological issues of the time. See also the detailed review by David C. Fowler, SAC 12 (1990): 296-305. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 10.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hudson, Anne Published Hudson, Anne. "The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Vox Clamantis Minor Latin Poetry 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 Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Clarendon Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Rogers focuses on "The Travelers and the Angel" from Gower's "Confessio Amantis," suggesting that it is fittingly in Book II of the poem as it deals with the struggle of envy. Using the work of Sianne Ngai--"ugly feelings"--Rogers argues "Envy is not simply a vehicle for decay of the world and community, but also a way to point out how the commons have been fleeced, as public and communal support becomes privatized and income inequity worsens." Rogers explains how envy might be used by us, channeling Gower, to question the increasingly failing social safety net and the growing corporate welfare of twenty-first century life. He then walks us through how he sees Ngai's work applying to Gower, particularly in regard to animal metaphors with a nod to Gower's "Vox Clamantis." Rogers then returns to "The Travelers and the Angel," arguing that "healing for the then-contemporary audience is as much about diagnosis as it is about cure itself." He then adds that, for him, healing in CA is incomplete and that the poem is permeated with a kind of pessimism before turning to claim that "What often seems negative or pessimistic in the 'Confessio' instead signals where healing can begin." Envy, Rogers suggests, is a vehicle to prompt discussion to then prompt healing. Here, Rogers offers his close reading of "The Travelers and the Angel" to illustrate how envy might work productively in the process he has outlined. He concludes that the tale suggests the cure for hurt is not to hurt others, but he also admits that this is not apparently easy. Rogers then returns his analysis to engaging the more recent past and present politics and political discourse of the United States. He offers a model in which envy might "help highlight and address problems which are not seen as harmful in Gower's text," and continues, "Envy, rightly positioned, might be central to healing and hope, a fact unvoiced in the 'Confessio Amantis'." Rogers concludes that envy, like trauma, has its use in our society because, as Gower demonstrates, it might lead us to healing. [JGS. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor RogersCon, Will. Published Rogers, Will. "The Price We Pay for Envy: A Political and Social 'Maladie'." Accessus 7, no. 1 (2022): 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 The Price We Pay for Envy: A Political and Social "Maladie." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The difficulty with Gower's Genius is his dual role as instructor of both love and virtue. How can Genius be a servant of Venus, and yet repudiate her in his role as orthodox priest? After a review of the criticism (highlighting studies by Knowlton, Lewis, Economou, and Schueler) Baker suggests the need for renewed study of Genius' allegorical meaning. Baker argues that Gower's Genius is "a complex and sophisticated assimilation of his two precursors in the literary tradition" (291) – namely Jean de Meun and Alain de Lille. In Alain de Lille, Genius does not simply embody the procreative (or, more broadly, generative) function, but is also a tutelary spirit who acts as a moral guide to mankind. This moral role (which Baker traces back to Bernardus Silvestris, Apuleius, and Martianus Capella), is subverted by Jean de Meun: "divorced from Raison, Natura and Genius become servants of Venus scelestis" (285). It is Gower, then, who seeks to reconcile the "dual priesthood" (286) of his sources. As "a priest of Venus, Gower's character is similar to Jean's; he is Genius as natural concupiscence, the amoral law of kinde" (287). But Gower's Genius also embodies reason, and Baker shows that the frequent distinction between "kinde" and "reson" in the CA mirrors Genius' dual role. In Book 3, for instance, we gradually see Genius assume his role as priest of reason and demonstrate the limitations of natural lust. For instance, in the tale of "Pyramus and Thisbe," Genius has Thisbe denounce the blindness of love. While early on, in the story of "Canace and Machaire," Genius may be "curiously sympathetic" (288) to the incest that comes about through "kinde," by the time of the story of "Orestes" Genius is willing to reverse his earlier position. Since Climestre's sin of homicide is incited by lust, Genius "teaches Amans that obeying the law of kinde can, paradoxically, lead to unkinde acts; through this tale the priest reveals the inadequacy of the natural law as a moral guide" (290). Gower thus "uses the dual priesthood of Genius to correct the unorthodox position enunciated by the false priest in Jean de Meun's poem and to restore to this figure the moral authority exercised by Alain's true priest" (290). Gower does not condemn all forms of love, for sexuality can be subject to reason. However, at a "psychomachic" (291) level, where the figure of Genius can be seen to represent some aspect of Amans' psychology, Genius is Amans' inner voice of reason, and not of love. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Baker, Denise N Published Baker, Denise N. "The Priesthood of Genius: A Study of the Medieval Tradition." Speculum 51 (1976), pp. 277-291. 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 Priesthood of Genius: A Study of the Medieval Tradition Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1976 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Peck addresses himself boldly and learnedly to one of the central concerns of recent criticism of CA. He begins by steering his way through modern notions of irony and textuality to settle on a definition that is traditional in implication, but adapted to the structure of the poem: "Irony, as I use the term, concerns itself with authorial intention, voicing, and the positioning of each voice, whether designated (Amans, Genius, Venus) or implied (author, source, ethical commonplace), in relation to the other" (p. 208). According to Wayne Booth, irony may be either "stable" and reconstructable, or "unstable" and indeterminate. The irony in CA appears to be stable, Peck notes; "that is, we have little difficulty determining the larger intention of the poet, for he is careful to explain his purpose in the Prologue and in the first section of Book I. Moreover, he adds Latin epigrams and marginal glosses to guide the reader as the poem progresses, and includes expository materials, especially in Book VII and the conclusion to Book VIII, which reiterate his basic goals" (p. 209). But if it is stable, it is not necessarily simple. In the main body of the poem, Gower creates a dialogue between two "unstable" figures, the comic, besotted Amans, trapped in the self-deception of his willful passion, and his confessor Genius, who doggedly but simplemindedly makes an appeal to Amans' non-existent reason. Amans' errors of judgment and self-perception are relatively easy to detect. Genius poses greater challenges: a "master at reduction" (p. 212), his simplified stories and simpleminded moralizations leave abundant room for, and indeed urgently require the exercise of, the reader's own ingenuity in the search for a stabilized meaning. Peck illustrates his argument with examples from the opening of Book 4, with Amans' first confession and Genius' first exempla on the sin of Sloth. Peck relentlessly problematizes the text, discovering inconsistencies in Amans' self-presentation and unanswered questions arising from individual tales and from their juxtaposition. He reaches forward and backward in the text in his search for the unspoken implications of Genius' lessons; at the same time, he offers a useful and cautious discussion of the dangers of reaching too far outside the text, allowing the traditional judgment of Aeneas contained in the commentaries on Virgil and Ovid to apply where it is consistent with Genius' purpose, arguing against the relevance of similar traditional sources regarding Ulysses, and allowing the traditional medieval interpretation of Pygmalion to enter in in a way that Genius does not intend. Peck's conclusion has as much to do with the complexity of Genius' role as it does with Gower's use of irony: "Genius resides at the crux of must issues of irony in the Confessio. Readings of the poem will usually be just as sound as they are subtle in dealing with the complexities of Genius' role. Too often he gets pigeonholed by one allegorical reading or another. Such placements may yield readings which seem stable if the premises of the commentators are accepted. But they must be seen as partial readings at best (p. 224). These partial readings, he implies, are all relevant, and place all of the burden on the reader to discover Gower's meaning. The irony of the structure of the poem that Peck implies but does not articulate is that such simple lessons should yield such great complexity, yet that from so much complexity Gower's purpose may nevertheless be ascertained. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 13.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A. Published Peck, Russell A.. "The Problematics of Irony in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Mediaevalia 15 (1993), pp. 207-229. 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 Problematics of Irony in Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This is primarily a codicological argument about Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.I.6. Some "Confessio Amantis" extracts are part of the larger argument about whether the "Findern Miscellany" was designed to be a coherent whole or to circulate as separate fascicles or pamphlets; hence Hanna's views have some relevance for Gower research. In large part Hanna is responding to Kate Harris' 1983 analysis of the manuscript, "an elaborate discussion which lays out in full the evidence of quiring, of the watermarks of the papers used, and of scribal stints" (62). He notes that while many earlier studies interpreted this manuscript as largely fascicular, Harris concluded that it was a single (albeit group) production. Hanna accepts nearly all of her evidence, but he argues that it instead supports the fascicular theory. Taking this approach requires Hanna to rehearse most of her evidence, and then to lay out his own logic of how that evidence fits the fascicular model. Gower comes into the discussion in Hanna's detailed explanation of the CA extracts (64)--the stints of the five copyists are highly variable in length and placement, so that he notes that "one is forced to assume highly unstructured procedures--either copying as a sort of social game, where the archetype and in-production codex were passed about in a gathering for successive additions; or copying by leaving archetype and in-production codex out (on a table, say) for chance additions by any interested members of the household" (64). Hanna thus raises some intriguing questions about Gowerian reception and the production or consumption of household miscellanies. [RAL. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hanna, Ralph. Published Hanna, Ralph. "The Production of Cambridge University Library MS Ff.I.6." Studies in Bibliography 40 (1987): 62-70. 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 Production of Cambridge University Library MS Ff.I.6. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Doyle and Parkes use Trinity College, Cambridge MS R.3.2 (581) to make some observations about the book trade in late medieval England. The Trinity MS contains the second recension of Gower's CA as well as some of his minor works. The account of Gower's works in the latter section includes the words "dum vixit," which gives us a terminus post quem of c. 1408 for the MS. Five hands appear in the MS (labeled A-E), and each of the scribal stints corresponds with the beginnings and ends of quires. The exemplar was thus distributed in portions for "simultaneous copying" (164). Of scribes A and C we know nothing, whereas scribes B and D can also be identified for various other MSS, including copies of the Canterbury Tales (e.g., scribe B is responsible for both Ellesmere and Hengwrt) and other copies of the CA. Scribe E, finally, was Thomas Hoccleve. Hoccleve's death in 1426 gives us the MS's terminus ante quem. Doyle and Parkes conclude from all of this that most copies produced in the period were not the work of a scriptorium (as Macaulay and Fisher suggest for Gower). Instead, the author, compiler, or stationer typically hired independent craftsmen. Such commissions must at times have required the use of scribes who usually worked outside of the trade. This explains the parts taken by Hoccleve (who worked as Clerk of the Privy Seal), scribe A (who seems inexperienced), and by scribe C (whose style resembles that used in documents of the offices of state). While Gower probably did not use a scriptorium, he "could have contracted with independent scribes and limners in much the same way as other patrons or stationers did, and perhaps retained the services of some of them in order to expedite the production of copies of his own works" (200). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Doyle, A. I., and M. B. Parkes. Published Doyle, A.I., and Parkes, M. B. "The Production of Copies of the 'Canterbury Tales' and the 'Confessio Amantis' in the Early Fifteenth Century." In M. B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson, eds. Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts & Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker (London: Scolar, 1978), pp. 163-210. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Production of Copies of the "Canterbury Tales" and the "Confessio Amantis" in the Early Fifteenth Century. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Scolar, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Mooney, Linne Published Mooney, Linne. "The Production of Trinity College, Cambridge MS R.3.2 Revisited." Journal of the Early Book Society 24 (2021): 1-25. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amants Review Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.3.2 is one of the manuscripts of the "Confessio Amantis" on which Ian Doyle and Malcolm Parkes based their conclusions in their foundational study, "The Production of Copies of the 'Canterbury Tales' and the 'Confessio Amantis' in the Early Fifteenth Century." Mooney's concern is to show that it and Princeton, University Library, Taylor Collection, MS 5 (olim Philipps 8192) are column-for-column copies, being produced more or less simultaneously by five scribes, the lead scribe being "D" (so designated by Doyle and Parkes), whom Estelle Stubbs has identified as John Marchaunt, Clerk of the City of London working at the Guildhall (2-3)--and "most likely . . . Marchaunt was the supervisor of the work" (16). Taylor MS 5, Mooney posits, the more deluxe of the two MS, was the exemplar for Trinity ("the second-best manuscript"), and "it looks as though Marchaunt was originally doling out . . . quires" (15) from Taylor to the other scribes (primarily A and C) even as Taylor was being copied from another exemplar by Marchaunt. These three scribes--D, A, and C--had a "common workplace," which Mooney, extrapolating from Stubbs' identification of D as Marchaunt, argues "seems likely to have been the London Guildhall" (17). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Production of Trinity College, Cambridge MS R.3.2 Revisited. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Coghill, Nevill. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review Gower's CA is a collection of stories within a framework, as is the "Canterbury Tales"; Gower, however, tries unsuccessfully to link together incompatibles of Christianity and courtly love. Chaucer is wise not to do this. [RFY1981] Published Coghill, Nevill. "The Prologue to the 'Canterbury Tales'." In The Poet Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949, pp. 85-94. Reprinted in Helaine Newstead. ed. Chaucer and His Contemporaries: Essays on Medieval Literature and Thought. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1968, pp. 164-73. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1949 Title A name given to the resource The Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales'." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Argues that the punctuation marks (virga) in Gower's manuscripts indicate that Gower utilized a prosody similar to that of Chaucer. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Southworth, James G. Published Southworth, James G. The Prosody of Chaucer and His Followers: Supplementary Chapters to Verses of Cadence. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962, p. 38. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 Prosody of Chaucer and His Followers: Supplementary Chapters to Verses of Cadence. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Summarizes "Rosiphelee" within the context of the "Cruel Beauties" tradition. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Neilson, W. A. Published Neilson, W. A. "The Purgatory of Cruel Beauties." Romania 29 (1900): 89-90. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Purgatory of Cruel Beauties. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1900 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Uses Gower's description of the Estates and various vices in the CA and MO as a context for the Canterbury Pilgrims' behavior. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Tupper, Frederick. Published Tupper, Frederick. "The Quarrels of the Canterbury Pilgrims." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 13 (1914): 256-70. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditatntis) 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 Quarrels of the Canterbury Pilgrims. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1914 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Eberle considers Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale" and its analogues in Trivet's "Cronicles" and CA as three different versions of a "story of origins," more particularly of the origin of Christian rulership in England. Each of them takes a different stance with regard to the opposition in contemporary political theory between the "ascending" view of authority (by which authority arises from the governed) and the "descending" view (by which authority descends from God through the king), a question that would have been of special interest to Chaucer, who sat as representative of Kent in the Parliament of 1386 in which these two views were set in direct conflict in the openly expressed challenges to the authority of the king. Trivet adopts a "descending" view especially suited to the royal princess for whom he wrote: his Constance is "forthright, self-confident, and empowered by her faith in God to speak out against those who wrongly attempt to force her to submit. . . . If 'all power is of God,' then God can grant power even to a woman, and a women of noble birth, good education, and a strong commitment to the Christian faith can play a founding role in the course of English history" (p. 131). Gower too seems to adopt a strict "descending" view in his Prologue to CA, expressing in his declaration of allegiance to the king a notion of royal authority that must have been completely congenial to Richard II. In his tale, however, he shifts the emphasis from Constance's personal accomplishments to God's grace; thus "he interprets the 'descending' theory in a way that is calculated to emphasize not the ruler's absolute authority over those beneath him but his absolute dependence on and duty of obedience to the God who is above him as the source of his power" (p. 132). Chaucer's version is more complex. He repeatedly calls attention to human inability to understand God's plan, and emphasizes the suffering that can inexplicably befall individuals in the fulfillment of the greater good. Not only is Custance's preservation attributed to God, but so too are her trials. The arbitrariness and incomprehensibility of Providence raise serious questions about the "descending" view of authority that the tale ostensibly endorses. In another distinctive aspect of Chaucer's version, moreover, Custance's suffering is repeatedly attributed to a confusion between God's will and that of a human ruler: her "submission to the authority of God is what preserves her from death at various points in the story, but her suffering originates in her unquestioning submission to secular authority, beginning with the authority of her father the emperor" (p. 139). The Man of Law's actual preference for an "ascending" view is made more explicit in the Prologue to his tale, where he responds to the Host's claims of authority over the pilgrims with a reminder (echoing Bracton) that "laws bind the lawgiver," asserting "the ongoing legal authority of his own power of assent" (p. 146) in a fashion quite unlike that of the long-suffering Custance. The conflict between these two views of authority, Eberle concludes, occurs throughout CT, and offers a way of discovering previously unappreciated interconnections among a number of important tales. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 14.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Eberle, Patricia J. Published Eberle, Patricia J.. "The Question of Authority and The Man of Law's Tale." In The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle. Ed. Taylor, Robert A. and Leyerle, John. Studies in Medieval Culture (33). Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1993, pp. 111-49. 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 Question of Authority and The Man of Law's Tale Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Western Michigan University, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Hieatt, Constance. Published Hieatt, Constance. The Realism of Dream Visions: The Poetic Exploitation of the Dream-Experience in Chaucer and His Contemporaries. De Proprietatibus Litterarum, Series Poetica, no. 2. The Hague: Mouton, 1967, pp. 47-49. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Review Suggests that Gower was experimenting with the possibilities of dream, since his approach to the dream-vision in the CA is ambiguous; the Lover may be asleep when he meets Venus and Cupid, or he may not; his dreams are sometimes prophetic, and sometimes simple wish-fulfillment; his use of dreams in the stories is invariably different, tale to tale. Based on Hieatt's "Dream Allegory in Middle English Poetry: The Use of Dream Effects in Fourteenth-Century Dream Visions." Ph.D. Dissertation. Yale University, 1959. [RFY1981] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Realism of Dream Visions: The Poetic Exploitation of the Dream-Experience in Chaucer and His Contemporaries. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 1967 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gardiner broaches an interesting logical puzzle: how does one identify the recension of a copy of the CA that lacks the passages in the Prologue and Book VIII that are usually used for that purpose? The manuscript in question, Columbia University Library Plimpton MS 265 (referred to by Gardiner as the "Plimpton Gower"), is "defective at both ends" (107), and so the dedication in the Prologue and the Chaucer material in Book VIII usually relied upon to diagnose recensions are unavailable. Her approach in the absence of these passages is to delve into secondary passages associated with the different recensions. Extended comparison of a number of passages in Book V lead her to conclude that that portion of the poem cannot be second recension, and she sees similar evidence that this manuscript "does not transpose lines 556-965" of Book VI (109), or include three variant passages of Book VII, further ruling out the second recension. The absence of lines commonly found in third recension manuscripts, but not in Plimpton (110), eliminates that recension as well. Overall, her logic is direct and sound, and her argument quite detailed. That said, her argument entirely accepts the concept of three distinct recensions, and thus may not be as useful to scholars who share more recent questions about that model of organizing the manuscript history of the CA. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gardiner, Eileen. Published Gardiner, Eileen. "The Recension of the Confessio Amantis in the Plimpton Gower." Manuscripta 25.2 (1981): 107-112. 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 Recension of the Confessio Amantis in the Plimpton Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Pearsall, Derek Published Pearsall, Derek. "The Rede (Boarstall) Gower: British Library, MS Harley 3490." In The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths. Ed. Edwards, A.S.G. and Gillespie, Vincent and Hann, Ralph. London: British Library, 2000, pp. 87-99. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review For many years now we have been patiently but eagerly awaiting the publication of the Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the Works of John Gower, which was first mentioned in JGN in vol. 2, no. 1, in February 1983. Jeremy Griffiths was involved in this project at the time of his sudden death. Now that Derek Pearsall is free of teaching duties, though not, we hope and presume, retired in any other sense, we are promised that the work will soon be brought to completion, and Pearsall provides a glimpse of what we may expect in a sample description of Harley 3490 (Macaulay's "H1") in this collection of essays in Griffiths' memory. The new description occupies ten pages, compared to the half page in Macaulay (Works 2.cxlii-cxliii). It includes a photograph of a sample page from the MS (in this instance, the passage describing Nebuchadnezzar's statue in the Prologue), illustrating the scribe's mid-fifteenth-century hand, his handling of the Latin portions of the text that Macaulay printed as marginalia, and the decoration. It also provides much more detail on the distribution of the text, the illumination (including reference to other work by the same artists and identification of the 10 coats of arms that appear throughout the copy), the layout, the hand, later additions to the text, and both the original and later owners. The editors' presumption, Pearsall writes in his introduction, was that "everything about a literary manuscript, from the choice of material to write on and the kind of writing employed to the smallest comments and notes made by later readers, is significant to the understanding of the texts that it contains" (p. 87). But significant how? As with any reference work, the uses that will be made by the information in the new catalogue cannot be anticipated by the compilers and will depend entirely on the imagination of the users. Some of the editors' choices are suggestive, however, of what kind of results we might expect. Harley 3490 is not a very important copy for the traditional sorts of questions that editors asked, when all interest was focused on the single idealized moment when the poem took its final form: it falls into the middle group of Macaulay's "recension one" but it has unpredictable affiliations with other copies, both within that group and outside it, and there are thus many far better copies for establishing the "text." The uncertainty of its relation to other copies , however, is what makes it interesting to more recent textual scholars. If we could determine more precisely the relationship between this copy and its exemplar (or exemplars), we would know a great deal more than we do about the transmission of the text and the role of the scribes in producing the surviving copies, information that would be directly relevant to the assumptions that we must make whenever we choose one manuscript as superior to another. One of the great differences between the new description and the one given by Macaulay, apart from but not unrelated to its very length, is the editors' self-imposed neutrality on questions of this sort. Where Macaulay presented a minimum of observed detail, organized in support of his own conclusions on Gower's own role in the development of the text, the editors of the new catalog have abandoned all presumption on how variations in the text arose, and no longer refer, for instance, to "recensions," leaving open the question of authorial participation. Their greater attention both to the ownership of the MS and to later marginalia (neither mentioned by Macaulay at all) and their promised attention to the selection of contents in other copies are also consistent with the more modern notion of the text as both the possession and the product of many others besides the poet himself. There is a great deal with which to work here. Of course, the description of this one MS will be of greatest value when it appears in the company of all the others, and with the example before us, we now have even greater reason to hope that the entire catalogue will soon be complete. The original owner of Harley 3490 is also mentioned in Pearsall's essay on "The Literary Milieu of Charles of Orleans and the Duke of Suffolk, and the Authorship of the Fairfax Sequence," in Charles d'Orleans in England (1415-1440), ed. Mary-Jo Arn (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000), p. 149 n. 14, which supplies a great deal of useful information on the culture in which this MS was written. [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 19.2.] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Rede (Boarstall) Gower: British Library, MS Harley 3490 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available British Library, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower, like Chaucer, uses various phrases common to courtly poetry; Gower is more firmly in this tradition than is Chaucer. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Brewer Derek S. Published Brewer Derek S. "The Relationship of Chaucer to the English and European Traditions." Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature. University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1966, p. 5 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Relationship of Chaucer to the English and European Traditions. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Includes reflections on, and reactions to, Gower's work during the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in relation to contemporary attitudes toward Chaucer. Discusses influence on "Pericles," early editions, Genius figure, and medieval "allegory" of CA. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Miskimin, Alice. Published Miskimin, Alice. The Renaissance Chaucer. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1975, pp. 2, 16, 18, 21, 24, 26-28, 30, 31, 62, 92-93, 134, 167, 183, 191, 207, 231, 239, 245, 254, 259-60. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Renaissance Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "By explaining and comparing the treatment of five of the tales about classical women that appear in Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women' and recur in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' this thesis examines the interrelationships between late fourteenth-century poetry and the socio-political environment of the times. . . . An investigation of the Prologues of both poems . . . introduce[s] the range of issues and material". . . , including "socio-legal consideration of rape ('Philomela') . . . [and] concerns with the female body, female sexual desire and the mechanisms of the marriage market ('Ariadne'). It then considers how a rejection of conventional gender roles in both literary and social spheres is used to articulate anxieties regarding the preservation of noble and national hegemony ('Dido') . . . , broadened out ('Medea' and 'Lucrece') to an examination of both poets' inscription of contemporary political concerns in their tales . . . [and revealing] the gendered poetics and sexual politics that underlie both Chaucerian and Gowerian verse." Author/Editor Author/Editor Canty, R. Published Canty, R. "The Representation of Gender in Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women' and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' and Its Relation to Cultural Anxieties in England at the End of the Fourteenth Century." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Exeter, 1997. Index to Theses, with Abstracts: Accepted for Higher Degrees by the Universities of Great Britain and Ireland 47.5 (1998), no. 10628. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Representation of Gender in Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women" and Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and Its Relation to Cultural Anxieties in England at the End of the Fourteenth Century. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Unexamined. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Twycross, Margaret A. Published Twycross, Margaret A. The Representation of the Major Classical Divinities in the works of Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Henryson. B.Litt. Dissertation. Oxford, 1961. Gower Subject 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 Representation of the Major Classical Divinities in the works of Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and Henryson. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1961 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "The aim of this thesis is to offer a reading of the position of women in the tales of the Confessio Amantis and also to contextualise John Gower's portrayal, particularly with reference to his sources and some contemporary analogues. The Introduction undertakes a consideration of theoretical problems, placing particular emphasis on the problematics of the female voice within a male poet's work, the pagan nature of Gower's material, and the exemplum genre. Chapter 1 analyses Gower's presentation of women's speech and places it in the context of medieval social norms and guides to conduct. This is followed by a statistical study of speech in the Confessio and some analogues. The results are examined in the context of the stereotype of the garrulous woman, to question whether Gower evaluated women's speech as negative and to conclude whether their use of words compensates for their restricted access to the world of deeds. Chapter 2 considers the position of women in the family. It is mostly concerned with women as wives since the topic of marriage is particularly important in the Confessio, but the position of mothers and daughters within the power structures of the family is also examined. Chapter 3 begins by discussing Gower's position in the medieval discourse on virginity and goes on to argue that his views on sexuality are part of his more general ideas on Nature. In his poem female desire is not stereotyped and finds many ways of expressing itself. Chapter 4 considers how and in what ways Gower's descriptions of women's bodies and their attire, and also cross-dressing and sex-change, are used to convey particular attitudes to women. In Chapter 5, Gower's use of language in the descriptions of rape in the Mirour de l'Omme, the Latin glosses and the tales of the Confessio is examined. Then Gower's representation of rape is explored, especially in the Tale of Tereus and Philomena and the Tale of Lucrece, comparing them to their sources and analogues. The last chapter investigates male behaviour in the poem in order to shed light on the position of women in the poem. It discusses whether Gower presents masculinity and femininity as opposed to each other, or whether so-called masculine and feminine qualities complement each other in an ideal human being. Although here may be a difference between male and female behaviour, this does not necessarily mean that they are judged differently. A brief conclusion draws the main lines of the argument together in a discussion of pro-feminine role-models in the Confessio." Directed by Helen Cooper. [JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mast, Isabelle Published Mast, Isabelle. "The Representation of Women in John Gower's Confessio Amantis." PhD thesis, Oxford University, 1997. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Representation of Women in John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Mieszkowski surveys allusions to Criseyde in Latin, French, Italian, and English literature from Benoit to Henryson in order to demonstrate that long before Shakespeare, indeed from her very first appearance in medieval literature, Criseyde was used as an example of fickleness and inconstancy. Shakespeare's portrayal, therefore, can be traced to Criseyde's traditional representation, and is not due merely to a 16th-century misreading of Henryson as several influential scholars have proposed. Such a view of Criseyde, moreover, was already well known to Chaucer's audience, Mieszkowski claims, and would have helped shape their reaction to Chaucer's T&C. Gower provides important evidence for her thesis. His reference to Troilus and Criseyde in MO 5253-55, which makes no comment on either character, demonstrates that the story was already well-known before the appearance of Chaucer's poem. (His allusion to a "geste" suggests that there was a contemporary song about the characters, which Boccaccio also refers to in the Decameron.) The reference in VC 6.1325-28, also antedating Chaucer, demonstrates Criseyde's reputation was already fixed. There is no perceptible difference in Gower's view of Criseyde in the five references in CA, which postdates T&C. That in 5.7597-7602 is preceded by a reference to Achilles' love for Polixena, which is also described by both Benoit and Guido, and thus "illustrates how automatically Chaucer's contemporaries associated his version with the traditional Criseyde stories" (p. 101). The allusion to Troilus and Diomedes in CB 20.19-24 is also linked to earlier Troy material. In content it is consistent with all of Gower's other references, and is not datable on the basis of this allusion simply because Gower's view of Criseyde was evidently not altered by his reading of Chaucer's poem. The scope of her argument does not allow Mieszkowski to consider more of the implications of her conclusions with reference to Gower. It is a pleasure, for instance, to discover that Gower's references to Troilus and Criseyde in CA are something other than merely trivializations or misreadings of T&C, as has often been claimed. On the other hand, she does not address some of the problems that MO and VC have posed for others. Gower's spelling of Criseyde's name with a "C" rather than a "B" (as it appears in both Benoit and Guido) has suggested to some that the references in MO and VC are also based on Chaucer (but cf. Fisher, 1964:234), raising serious problems in the chronology of these works. Mieszkowski has no comment on the controversy or on how Gower might have gotten the spelling. Her evidence for the dating of MO (from Kittredge, 1909) is also a bit out of date. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 8.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mieszkowski, Gretchen Published Mieszkowski, Gretchen. "The Reputation of Criseyde 1155-1500." Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences Transactions 43 (1971), pp. 71-153. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Cinkante Balades Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Reputation of Criseyde 1155-1500 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Book VII of the "Confessio Amantis" draws upon Brunetto Latini's "Li Livres dou Trésor" for its discussion of the divisions of knowledge, but whereas Latini organizes knowledge into theory, practice, and logic, Gower's division is theory, practice, and rhetoric. Newman's essay focuses upon this difference and argues that, for Gower, logic is subordinate to rhetoric because "logic has the same situatedness in human relations, and thus makes the same ethical claims on practitioners traditionally ascribed to rhetoric" (38). For Newman, Gower's view of logic is that it "is never simply an abstract intellectual activity or formal operation that produces stable meanings which exist independent of the discursive community in which it is practiced" (44). This approach to logic as inherently contextual, and not intrinsically truthful or "trewe and plein" (CA 7.1734) is especially problematic for Gower because logic's position as rhetorical is not necessarily apparent, which undermines its utility in legal, political, and theological arenas. As evidence, Newman analyzes several specific and subtle instances in the CA of syntactical ambiguity, especially passages employing double and triple negatives, that appear to undermine logic's authority. Newman's close readings are meticulous and provocative and rely upon subtle differences in the possible syntactical functions of specific words and constructions. In the final section of this essay, Newman suggests that Gower may have subordinated logic to rhetoric in order to "cast considerable doubt on the idea that logic might offer any more moral guidance than rhetoric" (51). Since logic is rhetorical, and therefore unstable, it may be one cause, he suggests somewhat speculatively, of the divisions in the Church Gower addresses in the CA (and elsewhere), including the schism. In support, Newman draws attention to parallels between the discussion of logic in Book 7 and the discussion of the schism in CA 1.1370-1374. [BWG. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Newman, Jonathan M. Published Newman, Jonathan M. "The Rhetoric of Logic in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' Book 7." Medievalia et Humanistica 38 (2012): 37-57. 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 Rhetoric of Logic in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis" Book 7. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Quotes Chaucer-editors John Urry (1721) and Thomas Tyrwhitt (1775) to show Gower was a fickle seeker after power; unlike him, Chaucer addressed "not one line . . . in the way of adulation to the usurper." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Clarke, Charles C. Published Clarke, Charles C. The Riches of Chaucer. London: E. Wilson, 1835, I, 35. 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 The Riches of Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Scanlon's essay is broadly conceived, incorporating both a history of clerical regulation of endogamy with a close psychoanalytic reading of Gower's version of "Apollonius of Tyre," and it resists any brief summary. Is central methodological principle is to unmask the repressed, which for Scanlon includes the modern failure to recognize the true extent of the medieval poet's confrontation with the nature of incest. Citing its initial marginal gloss, he identifies incest as the central theme of "Apollonius of Tyre," though it occurs explicitly only in the opening episode. Both Athenagoras' and Apollonius' relations with their daughters recapitulate Antiochus' with his. Athenagoras, in arranging the marriage that his daughter desires with Apollonius, also reveals the extent of his own control of her fate. "If the three-way exchange" among them "shows the patriarchal law of exogamy at its most beneficent, . . . [it] also reveals its violent underside. Even the best of good fathers bears this violent stain" (p. 121). Apollonius' situation is more complex. Unknown to him, his daughter has been sold into sexual slavery, which enacts "the guilty pleasure this narrative takes in imagining the possible violation of even this most virtuous of daughters" (p. 121). Apollonius, sharing in Antiochus' guilt, must suffer in order to expiate it, and it is finally Thais herself who redeems him. But "in achieving its resolution the narrative does not demonstrate the essential justice of the patriarchal law of exogamy. On the contrary, the narrative comes to resolution by demonstrating the law's essential injustice, then counterpoising it with the figure of the good daughter, who absorbs this injustice and transcends it" (p. 123). In offering this reading (which must be considered in all its detail), Scanlon is conscious of the possible anachronism of his use of terms drawn from modern psychoanalysis, but he insists that psychoanalytic insight is both anticipated and confirmed in medieval texts, and he credits Gower, in his implication of all patriarchal authority in Antiochus' guilt, with an awareness of the historical and social dimensions of incest which psychoanalysis, "like the rest of modernity," has managed to repress (p. 127). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Scanlon, Larry Published Scanlon, Larry. "The Riddle of Incest: John Gower and the Problem of Medieval Sexuality." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 93-127. 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 Riddle of Incest: John Gower and the Problem of Medieval Sexuality. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Aguirre considers Gower's tale of Florent within his discussion of the relation between the English analogues of Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale and Celtic myths of sovereignty from which some scholars believe that these tales derive. Aguirre argues for a closer connection than has been traditionally recognized, and he sees a continuity, with transformation, between the numinous, extra-rational woman who grants territorial sovereignty in the Celtic tales and the fairy-like woman who makes an unreasonable demand for sovereignty in marriage in the later versions. He suggests further transformation of the figure of the woman in SGGK and later literature. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 13.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Aguirre, Manuel Published Aguirre, Manuel. "The Riddle of Sovereignty." Modern Language Review 88 (1993), pp. 273-82. 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 Riddle of Sovereignty Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower as a satirist is without humor, a voice of rage and social criticism. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Alden, Raymond M. Published Alden, Raymond M. The Rise of Formal Satire in England Under Classical Influence. University of Pennsylvania Series in Philology, Literature, and Archaeology, vol. VII, no, 2, 1899. Reprint. Hamden: CT: Archon, 1962, pp. 12, 151. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Rise of Formal Satire in England Under Classical Influence. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1899 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "This dissertation demonstrates that a number of economic, social, and political elements came together in the late fourteenth century to provide a moment in English literature where London acquired a significant cultural presence in the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer and his contemporaries. . . . Using the market values of the city, Langland's Piers Plowman becomes as much an exploration of the value of the soul as it is a quest for the soul's redemption. As a result, Langland's poem critiques more than just the moral aspects of his society but the economic and social elements as well. Gower's Confessio Amantis concerns the role of truth in human society; many of the tales show that characters who seek truth prosper, while those who do not perish." [JGN 15.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig E Published Bertolet, Craig E. "The Rise of London Literature: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the Poetics of the City in Late Medieval English Poetry." Ph.D. dissertation. Pennsylvania State University, 1995. 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 The Rise of London Literature: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the Poetics of the City in Late Medieval English Poetry Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower's tale of "Canace and Machaire" includes a passage describing their sharing a bedchamber (CA 3.148-53) that was added by the poet. Commentators on the tale have implied that the proximity of the children somehow excused them from their sin. But Gower has added a similar passage to his tale of "Apollonius of Tyre" (8.291) which hardly constitutes a justification for Antiochus' rape of his daughter. Tales in several other exemplum collections illustrate the potentially harmful results of family members having a common bed. Most are concerned with parents and their children, but John Mirk contains a specific warning against children above the age of seven lying together. Shaw concludes that the shared bed in "Canace and Machaire" is an "admonitory device," offering a warning for parents, rather than "a means of eliciting sympathy" for the children. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 8.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Shaw, Judith Davis Published Shaw, Judith Davis. "The Role of the Shared Bed in John Gower's Tales of Incest [sic]." ELN 26 (1989), pp. 4-7. 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 Role of the Shared Bed in John Gower's Tales of Incest [sic] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Hatton argues against the view that Gower's figures of Genius, Cupid, and Venus are representatives of "honeste love." According to Hatton, these figures do not usually speak for the poet, and we have to learn to read the CA ironically in order to ascertain Gower's intentions. Gower's Venus and Cupid are largely unchanged from the "Roman de la Rose" (where they represent concupiscence), and Genius provides Amans with a very limited perspective. Specifically, Genius is guilty of a "doggedly literal handling of rich allegorical materials throughout the Confessio Amantis" (36). In the Tale of Aspidis, for example, Genius ignores the allegorical lesson (present in the MO) that the lover should avoid the temptations of worldly delight and focus on spiritual pursuits. Similarly, in the Tale of Mars and Venus, Genius changes Ovid's story in order to condemn jealousy; in doing so, he ignores the allegorical tradition that saw Venus and Mars as led astray by concupiscence. Hatton acknowledges that in Book 8 Venus seems to take on a different and more positive role, but he argues that this is in keeping with the medieval idea that there were two Venuses. The final Pauline message of the poem is that Amans must "put off the old man of the flesh and become a new man of the spirit" (39). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hatton, Thomas J Published Hatton, Thomas J. "The Role of Venus and Genius in John Gower's Confessio Amantis: A Reconsideration." Greyfriar 16 (1975), pp. 29-40. ISSN 0533-2869 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Role of Venus and Genius in John Gower's Confessio Amantis: A Reconsideration Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Knox contends, sweepingly, that the "Roman de la Rose" was responsible for "modernizing" poetry in England: introducing would-be writers from "aristocratic communities" (36) like Chaucer, Gower, the author of "Gawain"--even Langland--to a sophisticated form of satire, new attitudes toward sexual desire and Latin literature, to the concept, in fact, of being a poet in the Classical tradition. He makes much of the "Valentine" poems written by Chaucer, Gower, and Oton de Graunson, suggesting that they formed a "network of literary interactions" (64) to produce them. With a nod to its roots in the "'Chartrian' allegories," Knox contends that the "Confessio Amantis" came about via the "Rose": "It was in the 'Rose' that [Gower] found a way of combining a love narrative with an encyclopaedic (or anti-encyclopaedic) discussion of myth, history, and philosophy, with an examination of nature and desire at its core" (115). "Gower . . . exemplifies the importance of the 'Rose' for making available a heightened literary mode of learned philosophical or cosmological poetry. He reveals what is disturbing or threatening about how the 'Rose' has intervened in this tradition, but also what is enabling" (116). As evidence Knox provides a close reading of one tale, "Iphis and Iante," from Book IV (118-20); he argues further that in combination Amans-Gower's withdrawal from love at the end of the CA, the balades of the "Traitié pour les Amantz Marietz," and the sentiments expressed in the Latin poem "Est amor" represent a kind of "implicit 'erotic pseudo-autobiography'" (122) that is also a response to ideas found in the "Rose." Subsequently Knox suggests that the satire of the "Mirour de l'Omme" and the Latin verses accompanying the "archer portrait" found in three manuscripts of the "Vox Clamantis" echo "Jean de Meun's infamous 'apology' in the 'Rose'" and give proof of Gower's "self-fashioning in the image of a satirist" and "his own authorial ambition" (170-71). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Knox, Philip. Published Knox, Philip. The Romance of the Rose and the Making of Fourteenth-Century English Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues and Literary Relations Confession Amantis Mirour de l'Omme Vox Clamantis Traitié pour Essampler les Amantz Marietz 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 The Romance of the Rose and the Making of Fourteenth-Century English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This collection of twenty-six review articles is designed to build upon Siân Echard's "A Companion to Gower" (2004). While not ignoring older studies, the chapter authors especially focus on scholarship of the past twenty to thirty years, with the reader directed to the "John Gower Bibliography Online" (4) as a complement to the substantial bibliography in the book. Each article "not only presents a narrative and a review of the most recent scholarship on its identified topic, but a look at possible avenues for future work in that area" (6). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Published Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017. ISBN 9781317043034 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Stevens, Martin Published Stevens, Martin. "The Royal Stanza in Early English Literature." PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 94.1 (1979), pp. 62-76. Gower Subject In Praise of Peace Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Confessio Amantis Review Stevens examines the origins of the royal stanza as a royal ceremonial device and then shows how Chaucer expands its usage and range. In the course of tracing the history of the stanza, Stevens points out that when John Quixley introduces Gower's French ballades in the Traitié (around 1400) he refers to them as "balades ryale." Stevens also agrees with John Fisher that the stanza may have been employed in the mock royal feasts of the London puy and that Gower's French balades should be read in that context (64). Finally, the stanza's association with royalty is amply demonstrated by the CA's departure from octosyllabic couplets in Book 8's supplication to (Queen) Venus and by its use in "In Praise of Peace" written for Henry IV (65). [CvD] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Royal Stanza in Early English Literature Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower has significant influence on fifteenth century literature. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Fox, Denton. Published Fox, Denton. "The Scottish Chaucerians." In Derek S. Brewer, ed. Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature (University, Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1966), pp. 166, 168-70. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Scottish Chaucerians. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 wide-ranging work tracing the maritime influence on English literary identity from Gildas to Churchill with especial focus on the development of several topoi of the Sea during the Middle Ages. Sobecki centrally "argue[s] that the literary history of the sea in English literature becomes a part of the vernacular discourse of Englishness" (4). The introduction situates Churchill's propaganda speeches of the Second World War as the culmination of "a latent, residual understanding of British identity as insular" (2) from which Sobecki works backward to identify the roots of this relationship in Early and Middle English texts. Chapter 1 begins with a brief history of the Sea in Biblical, Classical, Anglo-Saxon and (to a lesser extent) Celtic traditions. Chapter 2 compares the related topoi of Sea-as-Desert and Sea-as-Forest within the context of the British Isles. Chapter 3 explores the medieval sense of Britain's geographical isolation at the edge of the Sea/known world. Chapter 4 deals with unwanted encounters of sea and shore including shipwreck and invasion. Chapter 5 focuses on English traditions of Jonah, Leviathans, and Christ-figures at sea. Chapter 6 follows the politicization of the Sea and the burgeoning concept of "territorial waters" (140). The epilogue deploys Shakespeare's "Tempest" as an example of the synthesis of these various maritime literary traditions and topoi in its expression of English identity. Of greatest interest to the field of Gower studies will be chapters 2 and 4 in which the author discusses the "Tale of Constance" and "Apollonius of Tyre" of the CA at some length. Sobecki not only captures Gower's engagement with existing English literary traditions of the sea (such as in the topos of the rudderless craft), but also identifies Gower's own innovations, specifically Gower's departure from his sources in his characterization of the sea as a personification of Fortune in CA's treatment of the Apollonius narrative (114-16) and in the poet's insistence on the materiality of the sea (117). Sobecki goes on to argue that even "The Tempest" reveals a Gowerian influence in its storms and seascapes (163). The connection between Gower and the sea was first identified by Macaulay, who noted that Gower's description of seascapes and storms were so "vivid and true" they demanded "more than a mere literary acquaintance with such things." Though not primarily about John Gower, "The Sea and Medieval English Literature" goes some way to contextualize Gower's particular genius within the indigenous maritime literary traditions of the British Isles and provides a necessary foundation for future research into the poet's vision of the sea. [CJK. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sobecki, Sebastian I. Published Sobecki, Sebastian I. The Sea and Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008. xii, 205 pp. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Sea and Medieval English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 "correspondences" are subject matter, structure, and style, which Gower keeps cooperative with each other as an "aspect of the order of the universe." [RFY1981; rev. MA, with help from Yoshiko Kobayashi]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Ito, Masayoshi. Published Ito, Masayoshi. "The Sense of Correspondence in Confessio Amantis." Studies in English Literature (English Literature Society of Japan) 40 (1964): 149-66. English abstract and link to original Japanese essay at https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/elsjp/40/2/40_KJ00006939604/_article/-char/en; accessed August 2, 2022. Reprinted, with slight revision, in Oiji Takero, ed. Chaucer to sono shuben (Toyko: Kenkysha, 1968) and in Ito's John Gower, the Medieval Poet (Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976), pp. 3-24. 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 Sense of Correspondence in Confessio Amantis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1964 1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Giancarlo, Matthew Published Giancarlo, Matthew. "The Septvauns Affair, Purchase and Parliament in John Gower's Mirour de l'Omme." Viator 36 (2005), pp. 435-464. ISSN 0083-5897 Gower Subject Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Giancarlo summarizes his article thus: "The analysis focuses on three points: 1) the poet's involvement in a parliamentary law dispute about land purchasing in 1365-66; 2) the parliamentary allegory (the 'parliament of the devils' in Part I), extensive legal diction, and the condemnation of 'purchasing' in the poem; 3) the significance these elements have for understanding the Mirour as a complex social allegory. This article argues that Gower's poetical ambivalence about 'the common voice' is reflected in the work's parliamentary form, its powerful but also subtly defensive condemnation of legal manipulation, and in the problems of representation--both political and artistic--that these elements raise. This analysis thus reevaluates the Mirour as an important early work in Gower's oeuvre demonstrating engagement with many of the same issues arising in his later verse." Even were it a lesser project, Giancarlo's study would be notable, examinations of the Mirour on any subject whatever being so rare on the ground. As it is, he makes a convincing claim for Gower's purposeful application of contemporary parliamentary practices to the Mirour, in the description of the "devil's parliament" in Part I. Particularly intriguing is the reminder thus indirectly raised that, as early as 1365, Gower was a close observer of parliamentary action, so evident from his negotiation of the land transaction involving the Septvauns heir---a transaction in which Gower alone of those involved seems to have emerged with his purchase (and probably his reputation, Macaulay's grumbling notwithstanding) intact. Giancarlo's focus on legal language laced into the sections of the poem he studies is very helpful, too. He teases out words otherwise overlooked as specialized vocabulary of the trade, thereby restoring a sense of how such passages would have been received by Gower's fourteenth-century readership. His sense of Gower's "poetical ambivalence about the 'common voice'" is a little less convincing, if only because, his basis for argument being relatively narrow slices of so vast a poem, it can seem less readily descriptive of the work entire. Too, Giancarlo (reasonably enough) assumes a straightforward, beginning-to-completion program for the writing of the Mirour, when indeed there may have been a lengthy hiatus between the earlier and final sections.] [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 25.1] 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 Septvauns Affair, Purchase and Parliament in John Gower's Mirour de l'Omme Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review According to Bloomfield, "Gower is an important figure in the story of the seven deadly sins in English literature . . . [T]hey constitute a basic element of his worldview" (196). In all three major works, Gower demonstrates the kind of "proliferation of detail" (196) and propensity for symbolism in describing and classifying sin that is characteristic of late medieval and renaissance culture. For instance, Gower's references to alchemy and astrology are reminiscent of the classical linkage of the sins with their planets and metals. Likewise, Gower's association of the sins with particular animals and diseases (especially in the MO) demonstrates his systematic approach to life. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bloomfield, Morton Published Bloomfield, Morton. "The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature." East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1962 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Seven Deadly Sins: An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept, with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Michigan State College Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Heather surveys astrological references in a range of Middle English works, focusing particularly on beliefs about the planets. Gower's treatment of astrology is frequently sampled (especially 339-47), and Heather quotes lengthy passages from the CA, particularly Book 7. It is noted that Gower matches up the days of the week with the planets, and in turn connects the latter to the twelve signs of the zodiac (342) and to the fifteen stars (344-46). Also mentioned are isolated references to astrology in stories such as "Medea and Jason" and "Nectanabus." Heather's evaluation of Gower's contribution to astrology is summed up in relation to Chaucer's work on the same subject: "Gower was concerned in presenting to his countrymen what had previously been written on the subject, and may well have had a greater part in moulding their belief in such matters. Chaucer on the other hand wrote rather as one who was weighing the value of the beliefs as they existed in his day and makes no secret of his scepticism" (351). Other brief references to Gower's work in the remainder of the essay include: a discussion of how Book 4 of the CA relates the subject of alchemy to the planets; a comparison between Chaucer's "Canon Yeoman's Tale" and Gower's description in Book 5 of Greek and Chaldean religions and their basis in astrology; a discussion of Gower's beliefs about light and darkness; the quotation of some references to the moon in the CA that describe its phases and its influence upon the tides; and an overview of beliefs about eclipses and their causes. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Heather, P. J Published Heather, P. J. "The Seven Planets." Folklore 54 (1943), pp. 338-361. 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 The Seven Planets Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1943 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Wenzel, Siegfried. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Discusses Gower's of Acedia in his MO, where he personifies the sin, and gives a description rich in iconographic detail. [RFY1981] Published Wenzel, Siegfried. The Sin of Sloth: "Acedia" in Medieval Thought and Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960, pp. 114, 117-20, 193, 221, 229, 234-45, 237-39, 243. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1960 Title A name given to the resource The Sin of Sloth: "Acedia" in Medieval Thought and Literature. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Mentions works; notes epithet "moral Gower"; cites "Gesta Romanorum" as source. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Smith, Lewis W. Hathaway, Esse V. Published Smith, Lewis W., and Esse V. Hathaway. The Sky Line in English Literature. New York: Appleton, 1920, pp. 36, 219, 240 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Sky Line in English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1920 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 on the theory of Jean-Luc Nancy, Batkie argues that "Gower's persistent use of audio-centric language and wordplay argues for a poetics of attention and openness . . . the openness and uncertainty of the ear" (37). While hearing is involuntary, listening is active, "temporal," and "open to the other" (32), as the listener must attend in expectation as a vocal utterance unfurls over time. Aurality calls into question the credibility of the speaker as well as the credulity of the listener; Gower values credulity as necessary to learning, even though it may lead to error (36). The VC reechoes with aural approaches, especially the homonymic punning uniquely suited to connect related concepts and allow, where appropriate, for multiple interpretations. Having recently co-translated the VC, Batkie explicates a series of sample passages: by playing on "sensus" (understanding) and "census" (accounting [of money]), Gower underscores how greedy prelates equate wealth with wisdom, while slighting the poor. The poet's riddle on his name has several meaningful solutions. The goddess Fortune--object of misplaced popular credulity--is described in grammatically ambiguous language well suited to convey her deceptive quality (37-44). For Gower, the attentive credulity of the listener is a necessary step to faith, to apprehending "the polysemy of the divine" (45). In new translation, the dual nature of the baby Jesus is harmonized in homonymic wordplay: "That he presses Mary's breast expresses true man; / A new star exposed expresses that he is God" (46-47, VC II.413-14). Although Gower's prophetic voice may sometimes sound in weeping, his vocal appeal to active faith is nonetheless resistant to despair (34, 48-49). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Batkie, Stephanie. Published Batkie, Stephanie. "The Sound of My Voice: Aurality and Credible Faith in the 'Vox Clamantis'." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 32-49. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 Sound of My Voice: Aurality and Credible Faith in the "Vox Clamantis." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Ames, Ruth Published Ames, Ruth. "The Source and Significance of The Jew and the Pagan." Medieval Studies 19 (1957), pp. 37-47. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Ames opens her essay with Thomas Warton's comment in his History of English Poetry that Gower must have borrowed his Tale of "the Jew and the Pagan" (Book 7 of the CA) "from some Christian legend, which was feigned, for a religious purpose, at the expense of all probability and propriety" (37). Ames suggests instead that the story, particularly popular from the Secreta Secretorum tradition, was originally a piece of pagan propaganda against Judaism. Ames' evidence for a pagan origin includes the tale's geography (even Gower's version is set in Egypt), the frequent identification of the Pagan as one of the (Persian) Magi, and the fact that Christians never charged the Jews or Judaism with an unethical code since they themselves were invested in the validity of the Mosaic law. Medieval authors therefore took up the story not necessarily as part of an anti-semitic agenda (although Ames does not deny some element of prejudice), but rather because of the non-religious meanings that might be ascribed to the story. For instance, James Yonge's prose translation of the Secreta (dating from 1422) employs the exemplum to illustrate his advice that a prince should not trust his enemy. As it turns out, the Jew is most like the Irish, whose treachery is well-known (45-46). Likewise, Gower's account tells us more about his politics than about his attitude to the Jews. After all, Moses is mentioned in Book 7 as one of the first lawgivers, and in Book 5 Gower praises the beliefs of the Jews in contrast to the worship of idols. Gower was thus more interested in making the point that mercy is greater than justice. In this he followed the Secreta, in which the Pagan was associated with Aristotle, who advised Alexander on the principles of kingship. The only medieval adaptation that Ames has difficulty explaining is John Bromyard's Summa Predicantium, where the Mosaic Law is simultaneously praised and condemned. Ames' conjecture about this troubling mixture is that "the friar nodded, and garbled half-recollected stories and sources" (45). Despite the opacity of Bromyard's motives, the general pattern Ames finds is that medieval Christians were less interested in the validity of Jewish law than in promoting an Aristotle who conformed to their own aims in writing mirrors for princes. [CvD] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Source and Significance of The Jew and the Pagan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1957 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Burke argues that the sources of the tale of "King, Wine, Woman, and Truth" in Book 7 of the CA have never been accurately identified, that Gower's artistry is evident in his additions to the tale, and that the story provides "a striking example of the sympathetic attitude toward women which pervades the Confessio as a whole" (3). While Macaulay was right about seeing 3 Esdras 3-4 as the source of the same story in the MO, the CA version is said to be borrowed from a "Cronique" (4). Burke suggests that Gower was actually influenced by four "Croniques" that tell the story (ranging from Josephus' Jewish Antiquities to Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum Historiale). Details that demonstrate Gower's indebtedness to these texts include the different characterization of Darius and the changed sequence of replies to the central question of the tale. However, Gower also adds new insights. His sources include a rather "pejorative description of king, wine, and woman" that is vividly contrasted to "the overwhelming superiority of truth, which is virtually equated with God" (8). Gower does not remove these negative opinions, but "he interweaves the theme of possible beneficence" (8). The king, for instance, can wreak havoc with his great power, but he is also described "in medieval Christian terms as the divinely ordained ruler of society" (9). Similarly, the power of a woman can mollify a tyrant, even as it may corrupt a good king. Gower's treatment of Alceste in particular shows that "Gower is much more sympathetic to women than his sources" (14). The major difference, then, is that for Gower "all three worldly goods are powerful insofar as they conform with truth" (15). Even truth, however, has changed, for instead of equating truth with God, Gower "plays on the double meaning of 'trouthe' in Middle English" (14). Since one of these meanings is "fidelity," the CA teaches that by "practicing the virtue of truth on the personal and social levels, human beings may share in the indomitable power of the absolute truth" (14-15). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burke, Linda Barney Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Published Burke, Linda Barney. "The Sources and Significance of the 'Tale of King, Wine, Woman, and Truth' in John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Greyfriar 21 (1980), pp. 3-15. ISSN 0533-2869 Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1980 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource The Sources and Significance of the 'Tale of King, Wine, Woman, and Truth' in John Gower's Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Citing previous studies by W. C. Curry, R. E. Kaske, and T. J. Garbáty, Wood connects the Summoner's skin disease and fondness for garlic, onions, and leeks with Numbers 11: 5 (240), but suggests that perhaps Chaucer borrowed not directly from the Vulgate, but instead from Gower ("Vox Clamantis" III. 85-90), and/or Gower's own source, Peter Riga, "Aurora," Numeri 215-22 (241-42). "We may also note," he concludes, "Chaucer departs from Gower's method by changing an abstract 'exemplum' . . . into a more rounded literary figure, thus almost completely Gower's procedure, which was to concentrate on the spiritual implications of his images rather than on the surface details of the images themselves" (243). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wood, Chauncey. Published Wood, Chauncey. "The Sources of Chaucer's Summoner's 'Garleek, Onyons, and eek Lekes'." Chaucer Review 5.3 (1971): 240-44. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion 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 Sources of Chaucer's Summoner's "Garleek, Onyons, and eek Lekes." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Caitlin G. Watt argues that Gower demonstrates that the confessional mode in "Confessio Amantis" is inadequate "to address such traumas as sexual violence" and that he calls for "a more egalitarian ethics of listening" (273). Using "the confessional discourse of feminist narrative anti-rape politics" (273), Watt considers the intersections of Gower's "Tale of Lucrece" with #MeToo movement insofar as confession may correct the social order and heal the one confessing. She attends to the numerous examples of sexual assault in CA, exploring how survivors are vulnerable to "public and legal patterns of counteraccusation" when they speak (274). Watt turns to the "Tale of Lucrece," which she claims "best illustrates Gower's representation of the pain of confession," adding that Gower's particular version of this tale focuses on the physicality involved (275). She claims Gower's narrative suggests a kind of voyeurism as a source of narrative pleasure--pain at the expense of Lucrece for the reader's entertainment--which parallels modern media's treatment of rape survivors and their narratives. Gower, however, takes us into the private experiences of Lucrece's rape, attempting to lead us through a reading that stresses her innocence; yet, as Watt explains, the confessors in Gower's tale "fail to alleviate her pain and succeed only in using her body to achieve revenge" (278). By the end of CA, though, Amans's swoon ends his suffering--a mercy not afforded to Lucrece and other rape victims in Gower's tales (and of course in the world). Watt concludes that the type of change sought by movements such as #MeToo cannot be achieved by confessional discourse alone: "It will require careful, self-reflective listening, and perhaps also new ways of reading the texts, medieval and modern, that have shaped the way we understand sexual violence" (280). [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Watt, Caitlin G Published Watt, Caitlin G. "The Speaking Wound: Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' and the Ethics of Listening in the #metoo Era." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 11 (2020): 272-81. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Speaking Wound: Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and the Ethics of Listening in the #metoo Era. 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 By "spectral advocate" Barrington means that in London, British Library Additional MS 59495 (olim Trentham) Gower demonstrably but surreptitiously (hence "spectral") structures some of the poems according to formulae acquired in his legal training in order to support Henry IV's usurpation. Like Arthur Bahr, whose essay "Reading Codicological Form in John Gower's Trentham Manuscript" (reviewed in JGN 31.1), argued for reading the tri-lingual collection as a coherently planned entity, Barrington sees BL Add. MS 59495 as purposefully organized around what she calls "legal gestures" which are "particularly prominent at four points in the manuscript when the royal audience is addressed: the English 'In Praise of Peace,' the Latin 'Rex Celi Deus,' the Anglo-French dedicatory verse bookending Cinkante Balades, and the Latin explicit 'Henrici quarti primus'" (more commonly called 'Quicquid homo scribat' or In fine). When examined sequentially, they reveal Gower's legal strategy for defending and supporting Henry IV" (103). "In Praise of Peace" she finds developing "an accumulation of common law gestures that advocates for Henry's right to rule" without having to address directly the great difficulty that Henry seized the throne militarily, i.e., illegally (103). Underlying 'Rex celi Deus' on the other hand is the canon law practice of "the libel (libellus)" in which "after naming the plaintiff, defendant, and judge, the libel breaks into three sections: 'the grounds the plaintiff alleged in his lawsuit, . . . the remedy he sought to obtain,' and a section reserving 'the plaintiff's right to amend, withdraw, or enlarge any of the proceeding statements.' The 'libellus,' as canon-law advocates were advised, succinctly stated the plaintiff's case and avoided excessive verbiage in order not to introduce accidentally material that might be used by the defendant . . . . All in all, the process at the bishop's level could be swift, short, and not at all complicated" (107). In the Cinkante Balades, four lines in the poem "O Gentile Engleterre" are found to "invite us to compare their processes to the civil-law Court of Chivalry (and its access to wager by battle) and the ability to resort to wager of law." After Richard's humiliating exile of Henry, "the lines then acquit Henry of his shame by the only legal means available, the compurgator's oath" (110). In "the final Latin verse, 'Henrici quarti primus' ["Quicquid homo scribat"] . . . Gower's Latin again appropriates the language of legal documents; however, its procedural gesture veers from the verbal toward the visual: the manuscript's rubrication of the initial 'H' is the most ornate in the collection, transforming the majuscule into a crowned Henry, creating a visual corollary to the case the manuscript has been arguing all along. Additionally, the rubrication is so striking that it creates the effect of a royal seal, an image 'embellished even the humblest writ'" (113). BL Add. MS 59495, she concludes, is thus "full of praise for noble King Henry, the poems ultimately celebrate the adroitness with which a nimble man-of-law might make his client's case, no matter how overwhelming the odds might be, and no matter how many years have passes since he forsook the public spaces of the courts" (114] ). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Barrington, Candace Published Barrington, Candace. "The Spectral Advocate in John Gower's Trentham Manuscript." In Theorizing Legal Personhood in Late Medieval England. Ed. Boboc, Andreea D. Medieval Law and Its Practice . Leiden: Brill, 2015, pp. 94-118. ISBN 9789004284647 Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Cinkante Balades 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 The Spectral Advocate in John Gower's Trentham Manuscript. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brill, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Volume 1, pp. 279-80, discusses Thomas Berthelet's 1532 edition of the CA, finding "reason to consider the Gower and Chaucer (i.e., Thomas Godfray's edition of Thynne's "Works of Geoffrey Chaucer") as companion volumes" (279), citing John Leland's belief that the Chaucer was Berthelet's production. Blayney describes Berthelet's loan to Godfray of "at least four initials and the woodcut border" used in the Chaucer (279). "It is," he notes, "therefore reasonable to suspect that Berthelet may have had a stake in this edition, though whether as a major or minor shareholder is a matter for guesswork only" (280). Blayney establishes that this border design passed about among printers, appearing in books produced by Pynson and Redman, as well as Godfray and Berthelet, the latter using it "at least five times in 1533-5 before lending it again for Godfray's (dated) folio New Testament of 1536" (280), further strengthening the collaboration of the two printers--an idea also accepted by E. Gordon Duff and Andrew W. Wawn, the latter in his essay on The Plowman's Tale (280). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Blayney. Peter W. M. Published Cambridge UP, 2013. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Stationers' Company and the Printers of London, 1501-1557, 2 vols. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "This book presents the story of Apollonius in an Early West Saxon normalized text in parallel with the Late West Saxon version, and also contains the Middle English version in Confession Amantis. The three texts are footnoted, and the Early West Saxon version and Gower's version are equipped with glossary. In English. [Noted by Masayoshi Ito. JGN 11.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kobayashi, Eichi Published Kobayashi, Eichi. "The Story of Apollonius of Tyre in Old and Middle English." Tokyo: Sansyusya, 1991 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 Story of Apollonius of Tyre in Old and Middle English. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Sansyusya, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Cites Gower as a social/political critic of the late fourteenth century. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Buckland, Anna. Published Buckland, Anna. The Story of English Literature. London: Cassell, 1911, p. 60. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Story of English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1911 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Pei, Mario. Published Pei, Mario. The Story of English. Philadelphia and New York: Lippincott, 1952, p. 58. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Review Caxton made Gower's work available to English readers. [RFY1981]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Story of English. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1952 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Concise and very readable; sometimes goes beyond strong verbs to include certain weak forms, inflections, and orthographical variants. An abridgement, with same title, of Lawson's Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1953 [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Lawson, Dorothy Day. Published Lawson, Dorothy Day. The Strong Verb in Gower's Confessio Amantis. New York: New York University Press, 1956. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Strong Verb in Gower's Confessio Amantis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1956 1953 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Fourteenth-century poets like Chaucer, Machaut, Froissart, and Gower are awarded a new and exalted status; argues that the dedication of Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" to Gower and Strode is seriously meant; the Man of Law is modeled on Gower, which makes the "Man of Law's Tale" jibe at Gower hit more closely to home; Chaucer tells the Man of Law's Tale to show Gower he could do better what Gower had done in his "Tale of Constance" (CA II: 587-1612). [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor David, Alfred. Published David, Alfred. The Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in Chaucer's Poetry. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1976, pp. 9-10, 26, 36; VC 56, 73, 119; CA 120, 125, 127, 252n. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in Chaucer's Poetry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1976 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Refers to Dr. Johnson's comment, in the preface to his "Dictionary" (1755), that Gower was a smooth versifier and an easy rhymer, only to disagree that this is an important achievement. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Arnold, Matthew. Published Arnold, Matthew. "The Study of Poetry." Essays in Criticism: Second Series. London: Macmillan, 1888, pp. 1-55, esp. 28-29. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Study of Poetry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1888 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Likely composed contemporaneously with Gower's making of his will in 1408, "Dicunt Scripture" "exhorts its reader, but in effect the poet himself, to make premortem preparations for worldly goods and for [sic] soul" (196). Weiskott determines a two-part, balanced structure, in which "the moment of death arrives precisely at the line-break between the two stanzaic quatrains" (196). Manuscript marginal notes cited by Macaulay in his edition identify the target of the poem as unscrupulous executors. Weiskott argues instead that, while Gower's larger purpose near the end of his life is always self-memorializing, here it means not merely "not to entrust one's memory wholly to friends who live on" (197), but rather more seriously, represents Gower's genuine struggle to reconcile being "both wealthy and devout" (198). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Weiskott, Eric. Published Weiskott, Eric. "The Subject of John Gower's 'Dicunt Scripture'." Notes and Queries, 69 [267], no. 3 (2022): 196–98. Gower Subject Minor Latin Poetry 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 Subject of John Gower's "Dicunt Scripture." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review From Harper's abstract: [In my introduction I argue that] "the widespread interpretation of madness as a spiritual metaphor has only a limited application to late-medieval literature and that there is a need to consider the secular as well as the religious import of madness." He then addresses "the meaning of madness in romance . . . . as a sort of social alienation . . . related to the increasingly positive perceptions of the Wild Man." Chapter three "discusses the dream vision of Book I of the Vox Clamantis ["Visio Anglie"]; it shows how Gower repeats the commonplaces of medieval didactic writers, regarding the peasant insurrection of 1381 as an outbreak of demonic derangement. It is seen that Gower makes use of the 'organic analogy' of society to show this madness as an infection of the entire social body. The sufferings of the nobility at the hands of the rioting mobs are described sympathetically in terms of 'grief-madness'. Thus Gower presents two very different, class-based, attitudes towards insanity." Chapter four "continues the investigation of the link between madness and social class" in Chaucer's "Miller's Tale" and "Summoner's Tale"; Chapter five argues that "the apparently insane narrator of Hoccleve's major poems stresses that insanity is a hidden and undetectable affliction," while Harper's "final chapter explores the association of madness, female unruliness and mystical rapture in The Book of Margery Kempe," concluding that the Book "contains a craftily double-edged attempt by Kempe to vindicate her conduct." Author/Editor Author/Editor Harper, Stephen. Published Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Glasgow, 1997. Open access at https://theses.gla.ac.uk/3152/1/1997HarperPhD.pdf (accessed January 30, 2023). 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 Subject of Madness: Insanity, Individuals and Society in Late-Medieval English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay gives us a bit of detective work concerning the "Sutherland fragment," a fragment known only from a photocopy of a single leaf held by the Huntington Library. As Pearsall says, the leaf was listed in the catalogue of a collection of manuscripts purchased by Henry Huntington from the library of the Duke of Sutherland in 1917. Sometime in the 1960s the Huntington Library realized that the leaf itself was not contained in the collection and requested a photocopy, which was provided. Pearsall's essay is an attempt to reconstruct the background of this surviving photocopy, namely "[what] it consists of, what manuscript it is possibly from, why it was not sent with the original collection of manuscripts, where the original leaf is now, and what part it may have played in recent sales activity" (21). Pearsall's tentative conclusions are as follows: "There was once, and may still be, a single leaf that had belonged to a manuscript of good quality of the fifteenth century, first quarter. All that now exists, so far as we know is a photocopy of that original leaf, made from a microfilm which was deposited, perhaps for a limited period, in the National Library of Scotland. Where that original leaf is now is a puzzle: perhaps in a desk-drawer or other infrequently visited repository in the National Library or in the residence of the Duke of Sutherland at Mertoun; perhaps irretrievably lost or destroyed; perhaps deposited in some distant bank vault, the property of a rich collector of medieval manuscripts and fragments" (30-31). Pearsall also appends an edition of the text of this fragment as an appendix. [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek. Published Pearsall, Derek. "The Sutherland Fragment of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 21-34. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Sutherland Fragment of Gower's "Confessio Amantis." 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 White looks at a number of cases in CA in which we are apparently invited to have sympathy for a less than completely virtuous character. Amans and the siblings Canace and Machaire win sympathy because they are the victims of love; moreover, none commits a "positively willed evil action" (p. 222), and no one else is injured by their errors. Mundus is a more difficult case, and Genius' apparent sympathy might be explained as ironic. Irony does not account for the sympathy shows Ulysses in "Ulysses and Telegonus," however, for Genius' explicit commentary on the story in entirely orthodox. Our satisfaction with Ulysses' trumping of Circe's enchantments (a reading that Fanger, in the preceding essay, clearly does not share) derives from an admiration for triumphant cleverness that escapes the confines of morality. White finds the same willingness on Gower's part to allow the tale "to flourish along lines not determined solely by moral concerns" (p. 233) in the pleasure we take in the "insouciant daring blasphemy" of Mundus' deception of Paulina (p. 222). Gower "is interested, like Chaucer, in writing good stories, and knows, like Chaucer, that though a good story can be a moral one, it can alternatively, or in addition, offer pleasures that have little to do with morality and which indeed are morally dubious" (p. 233). And as a final example of his point, White cites the fabliauesque tale of "Geta and Amphitrion." [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor White, Hugh Published White, Hugh. "The Sympathetic Villain in Confessio Amantis." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 221-235. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Sympathetic Villain in Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Beer argues that "John Gower's Confessio Amantis is a coherent poem, that its bleak conclusion is inevitable, and that the exemplary moral tales in the main body of the poem work to anticipate and prepare the ground for that conclusion." In support of this argument," he analyzes a sequence of tales from book V--the tales of Echo, Babio and Croceus, Adrian and Bardus, and Theseus and Ariadne--in order to show how they function on multiple levels. Ostensibly, they warn against sins of which the hapless Amans is not guilty (and which he accuses his lady of having committed herself); on a deeper level, and with the help of tactful hints from Genius, they warn Amans of the dangers to which his unrequited love may expose him, and of its inevitable end-point. In advancing these claims, Beer contests the views of scholars who have argued for the incoherence of CA, or for a more optimistic view of Genius's advice to Amans. He suggests "that coming to terms with the poem's coherence and bleakness enhances our appreciation of its subtlety and profundity." [LB/RFY. eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Beer, Lewis Published Beer, Lewis. "The Tactful Genius: Abiding the End in the 'Confessio Amantis'." Studies in Philology 115.2 (2015), pp. 234-64. ISSN 0039-3738 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Tactful Genius: Abiding the End in the 'Confessio Amantis' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The CA is a coherent poem, Beer argues, contra those who have celebrated its lack of coherence: the tales and the conclusion lead to a single consistent lesson. And that lesson is about the rejection of love in this world, contra those (such as the reviewer) who have found in the poem a complex but coherent lesson on the ethics of human love. In the conclusion to the poem, when Amans looks into the mirror and sees that he is old, he is also reminded that he must die: that life is transient, and that love is transient as well. This is the absolute that constitutes the final and this defining moral lesson. "Amans must turn away from vice and toward virtue not simply because he happens to be old now but because of the 'last things,' because he will die and be judged and pass into the afterlife. . . . According to Gower, the uncertainty of the world, and the inevitability of death, should drive us to the certainties of the Christian faith, to that invariable abstract form of the good which is God" (240-41). "Amans's love must and will be transcended and replaced by Christian love" (242). To demonstrate how the exempla in the preceding seven books support this lesson, Beer examines a sequence of four tales in Book V (V.4431-5495) and argues that the real lesson in each case differs from the ostensible lesson on Amans' conduct. When Amans complains, in the discussion of Usury, that he receives less in rewards from his lady than he feels he has earned, Genius replies with a statement on the essential arbitrariness of love which concludes, "Forthi coveite noght to faste, / Mi sone, bot abyd thin ende, / Per cas al mai to goode wende" (5.4564-66). "Amans should not covet too fast," Beer writes, "because he will not get what he covets; he should abide his end because one day (whether that day comes soon or not) he will die, and then it will matter a great deal whether or not he coveted too fast" (246). The tale of Echo that follows, while offering a warning against the use of "brocours," also offers, in the figures of Echo and Jupiter, images of the instability and deceptiveness of love, and in Juno, a model for the disillusionment that Amans experiences, as "both of them find out that their own idealized view of their love relationships have been divorced from the truth" (248). As a lesson on avoiding Parsimony, the tale of Babio and Croceus would seem to be irrelevant to Amans, since he has just insisted that his lady will not accept his gifts. The tale is less about material gifts, however, than it is about Babio's--and Amans'--lack of virility (in Gower's source, Babio is clearly old), and the surrounding discussion alludes to the difference between the "gifts" one offers a woman and those that one offers to God. Genius' definition of "Unkindeschipe" (V.4903-05) sounds very much like his earlier description of the arbitrariness of Love's rewards. In the tale that follows, Adrian serves as the example of the sin in question, but the real lesson for Amans lies in Bardus. "This is the story of a man who trusts that he will garner a material reward for his conscious and voluntary service to another person but is instead spurned by that person and rewarded far beyond his desert by those he had not consciously set out to help. . . . Amans, like Bardus, serves devoutly in the hope of a modest reward but he will get nothing from the person he serves. However, the virtue that he displays and nourishes in doing such service (provided it is 'honeste') will garner rewards in heaven" (253). And "while Bardus received an unlooked-for reward in exchange for his good deeds, the tale of Ariadne [which immediately follows] offers the bleak prospect of misdirected devotion going completely unrewarded" (260). Amans' "misguided love leaves him as vulnerable to the assaults of Fortune as was the otherwise reasonable Ariadne, once she had surrendered herself and her agency to Theseus" (259). Genius' final comments to Amans in Book V, while seeming to offer sympathetic encouragement, also contain a reminder of transiency in the allusion to the seasons (V.7823-31) and another anticipation of the final moral lesson in its references to "grace" (V.7832). Genius' role, Beer concludes, is to unfold the lessons of the poem gradually. "Genius is intimately associated with those feelings that have governed Amans, which is why he keeps Amans company for so long, why he is an unstable figure in some ways, and why he departs once those feelings have disappeared. By exploring such feelings in great depth and detail, Genius gradually exposes certain uncomfortable truths about them. He points toward, without quite encompassing, the full understanding of these truths that Amans finally attains when he looks into the mirror: just as that vision brings Amans to knowledge of himself, so Genius's exempla have worked to show Amans the truth about his own condition" (263). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Beer, Lewis Published Beer, Lewis. "The Tactful Genius: Abiding the End in the 'Confessio Amantis'." Studies in Philology 112 (2015), pp. 234-63. ISSN 0039-3738 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Tactful Genius: Abiding the End in the 'Confessio Amantis' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Beidler summarizes Ovid's account of "Polyphemus's interruption of the love of Acis and Galatea" ("Metamorphoses" 13.738-897) and identifies ways that Gower alters this source of his own account in CA 2.97-200: he makes the characters "far more human" so that the tale is clearly applicable to Amans, increasing Galatea's attractiveness, eliminating Polyphemus's lament and much of his gigantic nature, and asserting the tale's concern with envy. [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Beidler, Peter G Published Beidler, Peter G. "The Tale of Acis and Galatea (CA, II, 97-200)." In John Gower's Literary Transformations in the Confessio Amantis: Original Articles and Translations. Ed. Beidler, Peter G. Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1982, pp. 11-14. ISBN 0819125962 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 Tale of Acis and Galatea (CA, II, 97-200) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University Press of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Beidler summarizes Ovid's account of the death of Acteon ("Metamorphoses" 3.138-252) and identifies ways that Gower alters this source of his own account in CA 1.333-78: he "eliminates elements in Ovid's tale, however vivid or dramatic they were, which would not advance his moral purpose," which is to warn against "looking when one should not look." [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Beidler, Peter G Published Beidler, Peter G. "The Tale of Acteon (CA, I, 333-78)." In John Gower's Literary Transformations in the Confessio Amantis: Original Articles and Translations. Ed. Beidler, Peter G. Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1982. Pp. 7-10. ISBN 0819125962 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 Tale of Acteon (CA, I, 333-78). Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University Press of America. Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section NonPeerReviewed Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982