8 100 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 Unexamined. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Pickford, T. E. Published Pickford, T. E. John Gower and the Apollonius Tradition. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Waikato, New Zealand, 1974. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower and the Apollonius Tradition. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Applies Geoffrey of Vinsauf's "Poetria nova" to VC; last chapter compares use of rhetoric in VC with CA and MO (all are judged "successful" uses of rhetoric and are designed to convince men to return to God-fearing behavior); sees Gower as an important rhetorician. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kloesel, Christian Johannes Wilhelm. Published Kloesel, Christian Johannes Wilhelm. Medieval Poetics and John Gower's "Vox Clamantis." Ph.D, Dissertation. University of Kansas, 1973. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 Medieval Poetics and John Gower's "Vox Clamantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review A study of manuscripts and printed editions available to sixteenth-century readers, with citations of evidence of ownership and usage, based on marginalia and sixteenth-century references to the texts. Includes a chapter on the CA, with the conclusion that it was much known and read in the sixteenth century. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hertzig, Marie J. Published Hertzig, Marie J. "The Early Recension and Continuity of Certain Middle English Texts in the Sixteenth Century. Ph.D Dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, 1973. Dissertation Abstracts International 34A (1973): 1913-14. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion 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 Early Recension and Continuity of Certain Middle English Texts in the Sixteenth Century. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Chaucer knew well and used all of Gower's works, as Mann attempts to demonstrate through individual discussions of Chaucer's characters and of Gower's, taken from MO and VC primarily. Her concern is always to show not only likeness and dissimilarity, but also to place social context carefully as background and rationale for creation of character. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mann, Jill. Published Mann, Jill. Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Influence and Later Allusion Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) 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 Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Whitman, following John H. Fisher's lead, sees "Troilus and Criseyde" in many ways a product of Chaucer's reading of Gower, e.g.: "the philosophy of Chaucer's poem . . . is but a development of the first thirty-six lines of Gower's 'Mirour'" (1). Where Fisher finds that Chaucer "refines [temporal love] and makes a tragedy of its eventual insufficiency," however, Whitman contends contrarily that the idea is "misleading": "too much has been made of Troilus as a tragic figure and insufficient of his foolishness" (2). "Chaucer," Whitman argues, "is even closer to Gower in sentiment" than many realize; the two especially agree on the character and condition of "the knight in love" (2). This for Whitman is fully expressed in the "Vox Clamantis" V, where Gower presents the debilitating effects love has on knights, and he traces this through Chaucer's poem by pointing out the "comedy" of Troilus' wooing in Book III, "swooning, then being thrown on the bed" (4), and the undercutting of "tender" scenes of parting in Books IV and V with outlandish description (4-5). In effect, he finds that love causes Troilus to "become impotent" (6) and eventually "blind and idolatrous" (8). Chaucer's narrator, however, equates "love with good," but this is also naïve, and not representative of Chaucer's own views, which lie closer to Gower's (and Andreas Capellanus's): "that any man who devotes his efforts to love loses all his usefulness" (11). Thus, the dedication of the "Troilus" to Gower is to be re-interpreted in a more serious light than commonly. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Whitman, Frank H. Published Whitman, Frank H. "'Troilus and Criseyde' and Chaucer's Dedication to Gower." Tennessee Studies in Literature 18 (1973): 1-11. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) 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 "Troilus and Criseyde" and Chaucer's Dedication to Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Rather than focusing upon merely the subject matter Gower derived from Ovid, Mish addresses how Gower's poetry in the "Vox Clamantis" is influenced by Ovid's poetic art. Mish posits that certain poetic aspects as well as elements of Ovid's life account for the fact that Ovid's "example is at work in the poem in so many direct and indirect ways that his is, quite simply, the most pervasive and significant poetic influence" on the VC (18.). Apart from analyzing "the function of the Ovidian borrowings in the poem," Mish addressed "the ways, both direct and indirect, in which Ovid's example affected the poetry which Gower himself composed in this work: indirectly, in the shaping of Gower's conception of his role as a poet; directly, in the development of his metrical technique, his sense of structure, and his style" (18) Mish includes an appendix with 217 lines from Ovid which Mish argues Gower incorporated or adapted in the VC (primarily in Book 1, which is the focus of much of Mish's study) not accounted for in Macaulay's edition or Stockton's translation. [BWG. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mish, Frederick Crittenden. Published Mish, Frederick Crittenden. "The Influence of Ovid on John Gower's 'Vox clamantis'." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Minnesota, 1973. Dissertation Abstracts International 34.11: 7198A. Full text available at ProQuest. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Influence of Ovid on John Gower's "Vox clamantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review From Pease's abstract: ". . . the first evaluative section of this study (Chapter II) is devoted to a comparative analysis between 'Pericles' and the known sources of the play. The resultant conclusion is that Pericles is based primarily upon Book VIII of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' with additional detail from Laurence Twine's 'The Patterne of Painefull Adventures' and the Latin 'Historia Apollonii Regis Tyrii.' More importantly, this section reveals that the story was adapted for the stage and structured by only one author, a craftsman of considerable dramatic skill. Evidence examined in Chapter III demonstrates that the first printed quarto of 1609 (Q1), upon which all other copies are based, is corrupt, for it abounds in mislineations, lost phrases, and jumbled verse. While this corruption accounts for many of the stylistic inconsistencies between Acts I-II and Acts III-V, differences in style . . . indicate two levels of workmanship. . . . Chapter IV [evaluates] those writers . . . suggested as possible originators of at least a portion of Pericles. . . . George Wilkins apparently used a report of the play along with . . . verbatim copying from Twine to produce a novel, 'The Painfull Adventures of Pericles Prince of Tyre' (1608). An investigation of the works which carry Wilkins' name as sole author indicates that Wilkins' unfamiliarity with the Apollonius story precludes the possibility of his having originated the play. . . . The arguments for the other two writers, Thomas Heywood and John Day, are based on verbal correspondences too conjectural to be considered as proof of authorship. The last section of the study is devoted to an examination of the extent of Shakespeare's language, techniques, and theme contained in 'Pericles.' It was determined that Shakespeare was familiar with the Apollonius story as early as 1592-93, that 'Pericles' reflects Shakespeare's known techniques of utilizing source material, that the metrical changes within the play correspond exactly to similar changes in Shakespeare's writing style, and that Shakespearean imagery and thematic ideas are contained throughout all five acts of the play. The concluding hypothesis of this study is that early in his career, Shakespeare began a play based on the Apollonius legend only to lay it aside in order to concentrate on the more popular comedies and chronicle histories. Sometime between 1605 and 1608, Shakespeare, tiring of the heavy psychological demands of the major tragedies and aware of increasing audience interest in the sensationalism of romantic drama . . . [transformed] . . . the . . . Apollonius narrative into a tightly compressed, highly imaginative morality tale . . . later to be expressed more fully in 'The Tempest.'" [RFY. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pease, Ralph William III. Published Pease, Ralph William III. The Genesis and Authorship of Pericles. Ph. D. Dissertation Texas A & M University, 1972. DAI 33 (1973): 4358A. Available online https://www.proquest.com/openview/4eabc22a721f9d492209f47bf7fda6a0/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y 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 Genesis and Authorship of "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review (In German.) Grabes' focus is the mirror when used as a device to foresee--or misperceive--events, or to represent introspection. Per his title, he is concerned with origins (when did the mirror used in these ways first appear in English literature, and in what contexts) and continuities (how and when did the metaphoric function transform into something other). His is a wide survey, tracking a multi-faceted device through multiple works across a long-running tradition discernible in written and graphic material (manuscript margins, designs on backs of actual mirrors, e.g.); hence by necessity little space is afforded any specific work. Grabes takes Gower and Chaucer jointly as putting the mirror to such uses very early in their works, in ways that set a tradition followed into the seventeenth century (69) (The study does not acknowledge Gower's early application of the mirror metaphor in the title of the "Mirour de l'Omme," instead concentrating wholly on the "Confessio," and only on the "Tale of Virgil's Mirror"(143), "Fals Semblant" (164), and Venus' mirror showing Amans that he's old in CA Book VIII (173). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Grabes, Herbert. Published Grabes, Herbert. Speculum, Mirror und Looking-Glass: Kontinuität und Originalitatät der Spiegelmetapher in den Buchtitleln des Mittelalters und der englischen Literatur des 13. Bis 17 Jahrhunderts. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1973. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speculum, Mirror und Looking-Glass: Kontinuität und Originalitatät der Spiegelmetapher in den Buchtitleln des Mittelalters und der englischen Literatur des 13. Bis 17 Jahrhunderts. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "'Pericles,' a popular play based on the old legend of Apollonius of Tyre and produced in London sometime between 1605-08, has long been the subject of scholarly conjecture. Although all contemporary sources attribute the play wholly to William Shakespeare, most scholars believe the play to be a revision by Shakespeare of a play written by another author. Basing their arguments on internal evidence of changes in literary style between Acts I-II and Acts III-V and on the fact that 'Pericles' was excluded from both the First and Second Folios, scholars have attempted to name either George Wilkins, Thomas Heywood, or John Day as co-author of the play. The first evaluative section (Chapter II) is devoted to a comparative analysis between 'Pericles' and the known sources of the play. The resultant conclusion is that 'Pericles' is based primarily upon Book VIII of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' with additional detail from Laurence Twine's 'The Patterne of Painefull Adventures' and the Latin 'Historia Apollonii Regis Tyrii.' More importantly, this section reveals that the story was adapted for the stage and structured by only one author, a craftsman of considerable dramatic skill. Evidence examined in Chapter III demonstrates that the first printed quarto of 1609 (Q1), upon which all other copies are based, is corrupt, for it abounds in mislineations, lost phrases, and jumbled verse. While this corruption accounts for many of the stylistic inconsistencies between Acts I-II and Acts III-V, differences in style which indicate two levels of workmanship continue to exist. The concluding hypothesis of this study is that early in his career, Shakespeare began a play based on the Apollonius legend only to lay it aside in order to concentrate on the more popular comedies and chronicle histories. Sometime between 1605 and 1608, Shakespeare, tiring of the heavy psychological demands of the major tragedies and aware of increasing audience interest in the sensationalism of romantic drama, such as that done by Beaumont and Fletcher, revived the play he had earlier begun, transforming the long, rambling Apollonius narrative into a tightly compressed, highly imaginative morality tale which encompassed the values of patience and of reconciliation with life, later to be expressed more fully in 'The Tempest'." [eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pease, Ralph W., III. Published Pease, Ralph W., III. "The Genesis and Authorship of 'Pericles.'" Dissertation Abstracts International 33 (1973): 4358A. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Genesis and Authorship of "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Whereas Gower has often been censured for being dull, Farnham finds in his didacticism a great deal of irony and humour: "The excellence of his narrative art is inseparable from its peculiar style, from that almost perverse comic sense, that keen awareness of the didactic value of misdirected seriousness, which suffuses the entire Confessio Amantis" (165). For instance, in the story of Acteon in Book 1, Genius expends almost too much effort to make Acteon guilty of "Mislok," for gazing on the bathing Diana: "The earnest medieval reader will be forgiven if he is seen shaking his head in both despair and laughter at a morality more obtuse and more earnest than his own, which has attracted his sympathy but repelled his common sense, and so won a comic victory over his sensibility and taught him some of its short-comings" (168). This "comedy of high prosaic seriousness" (168-69) is also evident in the Prologue, where all the attention paid to kings and governments obscures the fact that the real issue is "the disordering of worldly love" (171). Finally, the great joke of the CA is embodied in the two figures of Amans and Genius. Amans is "the would-be dirty old man, frustrated and bewildered by an emotional commitment of embarrassing purity" (172) and Genius, in a similar mixture of character traits, is "the affable Confessor forever in a muddle over which god he serves, too garrulous to listen with understanding, too obtuse to grasp any of the realities which lie behind the moral platitudes with which his prosaic mind is plentifully furnished" (172). While the joke is without malice, "only by laughter can we come to recognize our moral beliefs and intellectual assumptions for what they are" (173). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Farnham, Anthony E Published Farnham, Anthony E. "The Art of High Prosaic Seriousness: John Gower as Didactic Raconteur." In The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature. Ed. Benson, Larry D. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1974, pp. 161-173. 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 Art of High Prosaic Seriousness: John Gower as Didactic Raconteur Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Harvard UP, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 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 list is incomplete and unannotated. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Watson, George. Published Watson, George. The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974, I, 553-56. Gower Subject 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 New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Observes that "[s]elections of Gower appear in only two" manuscripts of Chaucer's CT and that "Gower's and Lydgate's work alone appeared more than once" in such MSS. [RFY1981; revised MA]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Silvia, Daniel S. Published Silvia, Daniel S. Some Fifteen-Century Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. In Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974, pp. 153-63. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Fifteen-Century Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review It has been argued that Chaucer tends to rhyme on verbs; uses Gower as an example to show that this is a general trend of Middle (and modern) ages. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Mustanoja, Tauno F. Published Mustanoja, Tauno F. "Verbal Rhyming in Chaucer." Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honor of Rossell Hope Robbins (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1974), pp. 104-10. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Verbal Rhyming in Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review A balanced study of the CA, in relation to rhetorical, courtly, and theological traditions. The "middel weie" is stylistic and existential, functioning not only as a directive for the practicing poet, but also for practicing believers attempting to bring peace to their souls and to the world. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Schmitz, Goetz. Published Schmitz, Goetz. "The Middle Weie": Stil- und Aufbauformen in John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Bonn: Grundmann, 1974. 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 Middle Weie": Stil- und Aufbauformen in John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review A study of rhetorical manuscripts and their present whereabouts; speculation on the availability of some to, and use by, Chaucer and Gower. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Gallick, Susan. Published Gallick, Susan. "Medieval Rhetorical Arts in England and the Manuscript Tradition." Manuscripta 18, no. 2 (July, 1974): 67-95. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Medieval Rhetorical Arts in England and the Manuscript Tradition. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In a tongue-in-cheek send-up of alchemy, refers to CA as a rewrite of the "Secreta Secretorum," with a "fancy" title, and the cause of Gower's going blind. [RFY1981; rev. MA]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Talbot, Charles H. Published Talbot, Charles H. The Elixir of Youth." In Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974, pp. 31-42. 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 Elixir of Youth. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Muscatine, Charles. Published Muscatine, Charles. Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer. South Bend, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1974, pp. 24-25 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Review Gower, like Chaucer's early French models, writes conservative though "charming" verse which Chaucer transcends. [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 Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Unlike Gower and Chaucer, Dunbar will include scraps of classical material without citing authorities. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Swart, J. Published Swart, J. On Re-reading William Dunbar. In Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honor of Rossell Hope Robbins (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1974), pp. 201-09. 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 On Re-reading William Dunbar. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Uses Gower as one of several examples of writers with belief in a graded--not to be called reactionary--view of society. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Friedman, Albert B. Published Friedman, Albert B. "'When Adam Delved' . . . Contexts of an Historical Proverb." In Larry D. Benson, ed. The Learned and the Lewd: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature. Harvard English Studies, no. 5 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 213-30. 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 "When Adam Delved" . . . Contexts of an Historical Proverb. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Argues that although Gower's story is based on versions in the "Roman de Troie" and Ovid's "Metamorphoses," he makes his own tale by emending his sources freely, focusing his story on the lovers, and Jason's betrayal. original version in Japanese, with an English abstract. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Itô, Masayoshi. Published Itô, Masayoshi. "John Gower's 'Jason and Medea--A Story of Golden Love." Bulletin of the Faculty of Education (Shizuoka University) 25 (1974): 78-89. English version in Ito's John Gower: The Medieval Poet (Tokyo: Shinzaki Shorin, 1976), 80-100. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's "Jason and Medea"--A Story of Golden Love. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower's CA is part of a cluster of poems with love at their center to come out of the English court; also cites Chaucer and Usk. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Reiss, Edmund. Published Reiss, Edmund. "Chaucer's Courtly Love." In Larry D. Benson, ed. The Learned and the Lewd: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature. Harvard English Studies, no. 5 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 95-111. 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 Chaucer's Courtly Love. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In this study Doob aims to provide a "representative late medieval view of madness and its conventions," describing classical and biblical roots, and the emphases found in later commentaries and representations. She identifies moral, medical, and psychological aspects of late-medieval literary madness, and a fundamental alignment of madness with sin. In the taxonomy that structures the book, Doob offers a set of three general character types--conventions" as she calls them throughout--separating the Mad Sinner (madness as punishment) from the Unholy Wild Man (madness as purgation) and the Holy Wild Man (madness as test or proving) and using them to classify and discuss a wide variety of literary characters--Lucifer and Herod to Sir Gowther and Sir Orfeo--drawn from various literary genres: saints' lives, romance, drama, etc. She concludes with an anomalous (as she admits) discussion of Thomas Hoccleve as a poet unusually concerned with madness, perhaps because he experienced madness himself--a possibility that Doob raises but leaves unresolved. The biblical Nebuchadnezzar merits his place in the title of this study by being, Doob tells us, the "prototype of literary madness" (58) in all its medieval forms. In a section that examines various adaptations of the story of Nebuchadnezzar's madness, anchored in the Book of Daniel, Doob assesses Gower's version from "Confessio Amantis" 1.2785-3042, admiring its "pathos" (86) and other romance elements that make it "one of the most moving" tales in CA. She clearly prefers it to the version of Chaucer's Monk ("pardonable only if . . . seen as an attempt to fit tale to teller" [p.81]) and pairs it with the version found in "Cleanness" as two effective treatments of the bestialized mad king as a moral exemplar. In this study Doob addresses neither Gower's retelling of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in CA, nor other renderings of madness not affiliated with Nebuchadnezzar in his works, such as the bestialization of the peasants in VC, the madness of love (CA, Book 1,130), the grief-stricken madness of Apollonius (CA VIII, 1687), and others. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Doob, Penelope B. R. Published Doob, Penelope B. R. Nebuchadnezzar's Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974. 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 Nebuchadnezzar's Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In Book 6 of the CA, Amans mentions a number of courtly dances and uses the phrase "forto go the newefot." Macaulay interprets the word "newefot" as probably the name of some kind of dance. Byrd suggests that "it is a nonce word, meaning not a specific dance, but a 'new dance,' the latest dance craze of the court." [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Byrd, David Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Published Byrd, David. "Gower's Confessio Amantis, VI. 145." Explicator 33.5 (1975), Item 35. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource Gower's Confessio Amantis, VI. 145 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Theiner compares Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale" with Gower's Tale of Constance, not to determine any specific influence or borrowing, but to argue that the apparent complexity of Chaucer's story is largely due to the Man of Law's method of "arranging the narrative in such a way as to remove or confuse the natural, unobtrusive explanations for the events in the story" (179). This obfuscation then allows the Man of Law – a would-be literary critic – to ask pedantic questions about motivation and causation and to offer longwinded explanations and digressions. This tendency, much like the Man of Law's predilection for including every possible genre of narrative in his tale, is absent from Gower's much more straightforward narrative. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Theiner, Paul Published Theiner, Paul. "The Man of Law Tells his Tale." Studies in Medieval Culture 5 (1975), pp. 173-179. 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 Man of Law Tells his Tale 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 Cowling traces the development of Amans's character in the CA from a general personification of "loving" to a complex psychological persona for Gower the poet. At the outset Amans is confused about love, and has trouble identifying his role in Venus's court. Gradually he "acquires a genius of his own" (66), and starts to think more critically. When he writes his verse complaint to Venus and Cupid in Book 8 he has become a poet, and so where he once was mostly a type of the lover, he has now been individualized as Gower specifically. To highlight the resulting complexity of representation, Cowling points out the ways in which the narrative becomes increasingly a parody of the Bible (e.g., Venus acts as Mary). In addition, Cowling highlights a number of ironies resulting from Gower's creation of a persona. Most importantly, Amans ends up denying the very religion of love that Gower the poet has created. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cowling, Samuel T Published Cowling, Samuel T. "Gower's Ironic Self-Portrait in the Confessio Amantis." Annuale Mediaevale 16 (1975), pp. 63-70. 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 Gower's Ironic Self-Portrait in the Confessio Amantis 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 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 Ito argues against James J. Murphy's controversial thesis that Chaucer and Gower did not know Geoffrey of Vinsauf's "Poetria Nova" directly. Ito points out that in addition to the well-known play on the acephalous name in VC 3.955-56, there is a further passage in Gower that is clearly indebted to Vinsauf. In VC 6.979-84, Gower's advice to Richard to avoid timidity is a detailed and skilful borrowing from Vinsauf's third example of apostrophe or "exclamatio." Ito also provides a number of other possible echoes, particularly in the description of a beautiful woman in VC 5.79-128) and in Gower's frequent use of the wordplay on "onus"/"honos" (labour/honour). While not many manuscripts of the "Poetria Nova" are known to have circulated in England, it is suggestive that a manuscript of the "Aurora" (a major source for Gower) also contained Vinsauf's work on rhetoric. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ito, Masayoshi Published Ito, Masayoshi. "Gower's Knowledge of Poetria Nova." Studies in English Literature 162 (1975), pp. 3-20. Reprinted in Ito's John Gower, The Medieval Poet (Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976), pp. 272-90. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Knowledge of Poetria Nova 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 Nitzsche's survey of the Genius figure touches on Gower as the last link in a chain of medieval adaptations. After reviewing the Geniuses of Bernardus Silvestris, Alanus de Insulis (Alain of Lille) and Jean de Meun, Nitzsche turns to the CA. Gower's Genius "appears to be an Orpheus figure who wishes to rescue Euridice (concupiscence, or Amans) from the underworld of demonic and disruptive love fantasy" (128). Gower's poem is original in having Amans, not Natura, complain to Venus. It also "offers the most optimistic view of the problem of sin and its solution" (133). Amans is able to move from the Venus of courtly love or lust to the Venus of "caritas" (132). By doing so he becomes a poet, an artificer, a role frequently associated with Genius. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nitzsche, Jane Chance Published Nitzsche, Jane Chance. "The Genius Figure in Antiquity and the Middle Ages." New York: Columbia University Press, 1975 ISBN 0231038526 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 Genius Figure in Antiquity and the Middle Ages Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Columbia University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Kelly's book takes the middle road between the doctrine of courtly love as formulated by critics like Gaston Paris and C. S. Lewis and the sharp critique of such a tradition by exegetical critics like D. W. Robertson, Jr. Kelly disputes the idea that courtly love had to be adulterous and summarizes the medieval literary ethos as follows: "preference for marriage, but priority to love" (34-35). The book is rooted in an analysis of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, but has a chapter on John Gower as well as important sections on the Ovidian tradition, clandestine marriage, and canon law. Kelly argues that Gower and Chaucer both tie love and marriage to "trouthe" or loyalty. Yet, while Gower praises marriage, he does not always condemn adultery. The reason "lies in the nature of the exemplary technique … [as] an exemplum is normally told to illustrate one lesson alone, without much worry about whether it contradicts earlier or subsequent lessons" (131). Some characters also appear in multiple stories, which creates further inconsistencies. But Gower did not feel it necessary to iron out all the problems, since he clearly sets out his views on marriage elsewhere in the poem (135). For instance, at CA 7.5372-5383, Gower describes how reason is to modify nature and its instincts, although reason does not exclude pleasure. This does not resolve all the difficulties in stories such as those of Iphis or Canace, but Kelly feels that Gower generally believes that reason has to put a limit to nature. In discussing the treatment of incest in CA 8, Kelly returns to the question whether nature is not itself reasonable. His answer keeps nature and reason separate: "Natural law usually includes the moral law, but Gower makes it clear that for him, at least at times, it does not. Rather, natural law is the same law that God has given to men and animals alike; and positive law in this context refers to the law of reason that God has given only to men" (143-44). Nevertheless, nature does not merely consist of compulsive desire, and Kelly dismisses Genius's comments about the "absolute irresistibility of nature" in the story of Canace: "But the conclusion that we should draw from this is simply that Gower has once again let his confessor run away with himself; by overenforcing one lesson [against wrath] he damages another" (144). Kelly discusses at some length why the end of Book 8 seems to turn away from love. Certainly, the sudden turn away from love is not atypical for medieval narratives: "particularly at the end of treatises of spiritual instruction . . . one is to be left looking at the shortest way to heaven" (159). This focus on the foolishness of love may also explain why Gower omitted in later copies of the poem Venus's request to Chaucer to make his testament of love. Despite the concluding turn to charity as the better love, "We must not, however, allow this concluding description to make us forget that the treatise also marks out a via media of honest love, 'That alle lovers myhten wite / How ate laste it shal be sene / Of love what thei wolden mene' [8.2000-2002]" (160). Kelly also sees this via media in other parts of the CA, such as the story of Sara and Tobias (275-80). Similarly, Ballade 4 of the Traitie presents a good example of how the theoretical view of marriage (that its purpose is for companionship, children and the avoidance of lechery – according to MO 17197ff.) runs counter to more instinctive attitudes, namely that marriage is based on love, loyalty, beauty, and virtue. In this Ballade, the Latin rubric speaks of procreation, but the ballade speaks of the second set of motives (295-97). Marriage and love were thus seen as compatible in the Middle Ages, and Kelly is skeptical about whether the moralists' stern views against love where believed by the rest of the population. Instead we often see "an ideal of marriage as at once passionate and virtuous, in which both the sexual and the spiritual delights of love are unashamedly sought and enjoyed. That such an ideal could coexist with moralistic inhibitions is evident from the writings of both Chaucer and Gower" (334). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kelly, Henry Ansgar Published Kelly, Henry Ansgar. "Love and Marriage in the Age of Chaucer." Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Love and Marriage in the Age of Chaucer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cornell University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Gallacher, Patrick J. Published Gallacher, Patrick J.. "Love, The Word, and Mercury: A Reading of John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975. Based on the author's Ph.D. Dissertation, "The Structural Uses of the Theme of Speech in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,'" University of Illinois, 1966; open access at http://hdl.handle.net/2142/59792 . Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Gallacher argues that the CA provides a sustained reflection on the importance of the Word (Logos, Verbum) and that Gower's amorous and confessional themes are thus grounded in a broader philosophical and theological context. Gallacher mines the mythographical tradition for allegorical commentary on such recurring motifs as the figure of Mercury, who represents eloquence among other things. His central thesis is that the CA moves Amans from amorous persuasion and lust to a broader cosmic charity which has its fulfillment in prayer and in union with the divine Word. While Gallacher practices a kind of exegetical criticism, he does acknowledge that Gower does not ignore human love or the necessity for human action and politics. In chapter 1, "The Rhetoric of the Word," Gallacher notes that our use of language involves a paradox: "there is a natural progress towards perfection in the use of words motivated by an awareness of the inexpressible" (2). This tension is found from Boethius to Kenneth Burke. Burke, for instance, describes how words are used most thoroughly when they come to describe the transcendent concept of God. An example would be the word "grace," which means both God's forgiveness and can stand for the grace of a literary style or a hostess. This movement from the temporal to the divine goes both ways: "an awareness of the inexpressible leads inevitably to the Word and … this process is reversible and synecdochic. That is, the redemptive power of the Word traverses the way down, descending easily into such cognate spiritual actions as confession and prayer, but assuming flesh even in the amorous conversation itself" (4). The rest of the chapter shows how Andreas Capellanus reflects on the courtly love motif of speechlessness; how Gower's MO shows that confession is about finding truth through words; how prayer brings us closer to the divine Word, even though God already knows our thoughts; and how the CA's theme of "division" suggests both that our multitude of words proves our disunity and reminds us that the one Word is the solution. Chapter 2 deals with the annunciation motif present in a number of stories in the CA. Gallacher argues that medieval writers acknowledged the potentially seductive overtones of the annunciation. The annunciation was also said to teach Christians to accept the Word as Mary did. In the story of Mundus and Paulina, the Egyptian god Anubis equates to Mercury in the Latin tradition. The result is a kind of subversion of the annunciation, as Mundus plays the roles of both Gabriel and God. Book 1 ends with the story of Peronelle. She mentions the incarnation through Mary as an example of humility (1.3275ff.). Her father also trusts her council (her word) and allows her to speak for him. Finally, it is significant that Peronelle holds the king to his "word": "Peronelle's invocation of the solemnly binding and magically efficacious power of the king's word clearly evokes the connotations of the Verbum" (40). The third major annunciation story is the tale of Nectanabus at the end of Book 6. Though this is a false annunciation, the outcome (the birth of Alexander) is positive. The third chapter describes how the CA chronicles "a rejection of amorous persuasion in favor of Christian prayer, but the journey to this goal is by no means narrowly moralistic" (44). Gallacher argues that Gower praises open and honest speech. For instance, while "Cheste" (contentiousness) is a vice, it can also be "a means of overcoming ironia, an excessive self-dispraisal" (53). In particular, prayer is the kind of free speech in which you can say what is really on your mind. Something similar is true for counsel in a lord-subject relationship, as we see in Book 7, where flattery is opposed to a stinging honesty. Chapter 3 covers a range of stories (some allegorically) before focusing on tales from Book 4 that deal with the power of prayer. Some (Pygmalion, Iphis) are rather erotic and others (Cephalus) don't seem to fit Amans's predicament, but the overall point is that prayer brings us closer to the Word. In chapter 4, Gallacher uses the example of Dante's Beatrice to argue for the importance of the lady's speech: "The Speech of God on the way down to the lover manifests itself in the speech of the lady. Since the lover perceives that she is somehow ineffable, that his love is correspondingly inexpressible, and that some kind of prayer must characterize his conversation with her, the lady's verbal responses in turn appropriately demonstrate reversibility, the descent of God's words to the lover" (78). The song of the Sirens is an inversion of this process, whereas women like Constance, Alcestis, and even the hag in the Tale of Florent lead their lovers away from simple desire or from detraction and to a higher truth and wisdom. Chapter 5 describes how the counsel of Genius, the confessional mode, and the amorous discourse result in a double recognition scene in Book 8. First Apollonius becomes more dependent on the will of God, both through Fortune and through the effective speech of his wife and daughter. Secondly, Amans's solipsism is "transformed, through the penitent's verbal acknowledgment guided by the confessor's counsel, into a prayer for charity which will result in spiritual, social, economic, and political justice" (143). Stories that lead up to these final recognition scenes include Perseus and Medusa, Lycurgus, Constantine and Sylvester, and the tales on flattery in Book 7. Chapter 6 has two main sections. In the first, Gallacher describes Gower's sense of cosmic unity. For instance, in Book 7 the relationships between the elements, the stars, fortune, free will, speech, and truth remind us of the power of the word and especially of prayer. The second section examines how autobiographical or confessional writing fits within this cosmic setting. On the one hand, the speech of praise culminates in prayer, whereas the negative response is complaint. The CA, compared to Gower's other works, shows a softening of complaint. Gower uses the discussion of Avarice in Book 5 to show that "complaint, as a form of avarice, is unnatural. Opposed to this is an attitude of gratefulness to the generosity of nature" (152). The epilogue sums up the many faces of Mercury in the poem and in the tradition. Gallacher also returns to the importance of the "word" and ends with a reflection on formalist criticism's interpretation of poetic words. The words of a poem create internal unity in the poem. Together they form meaning. Northrop Frye refers to the poetic word as a "connector" – each word tends to link to all the other words and to a symbolic center. In the same way all works of literature refer to a kind of symbolic center. This formalist criticism is ultimately dependent on the theology of the Word that goes back to the Middle Ages and to writers like Gower. [CvD] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Love, The Word, and Mercury: A Reading of John Gower's Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of New Mexico Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Economou notes a "strong thematic bond among works like the De planctu naturae, the Roman de la Rose, the Parlement of Foules, and the Confessio Amantis, works which share strong formal and generic elements" (23). Each of these works focuses on courtly love, and each participates in the medieval idea of the two Venuses. Gower's Venus is the "good Venus, associated with Natura (VIII. 2337-44) and identified as the planet (VIII 2942-44)" (31-32). This Venus restores Amans to his senses and allows him to recognize the folly of lechery in his old age. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Economou, George D Published Economou, George D. "The Two Venuses and Courtly Love." In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly Love in Medieval Literature. Ed. Ferrante, Joan M and Economou, George D. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1975, pp. 17-50. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Two Venuses and Courtly Love Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Kennikat, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Kirk surveys a number of English works and writers that Chaucer may have known or drawn from. The first of these is Gower, whose CA is a model of the plain style (as C. S. Lewis called it). Gower's poetry is a combination of "simplicity of style and decorative intricacy of structure" (112), although Kirk also goes on to call Gower's spare, direct style "limpid" (113). Kirk agrees with J. A. Burrow that both poets tend to work "concentrically, embedding simpler units in larger, formal one" (114). This process of encapsulation allows them to explore various parallel views of love (the different kinds of Venuses). Gower explores the meaning of love by combining personification allegory (in the frame) with narratives of individual people and situations. He is thus able to combine lucid narrative with lucid moralization. Chaucer, by contrast, dramatizes both levels of understanding within his narratives. Chaucer communicates by juxtaposition of narratives. In Gower's hands, by contrast, encapsulation "becomes a delightful puzzle, a masterpiece of the fluid Gothic tracery of fourteenth-century English windows, which makes the epithet which their contemporary, the French poet Deschamps, attached to Chaucer more applicable to Gower [--] "grand translateur" (115). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kirk, Elizabeth D Published Kirk, Elizabeth D. "Chaucer and his English Contemporaries." In Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles. Ed. Economou, George D. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975, pp. 111-127. 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 Chaucer and his English Contemporaries Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available McGraw-Hill, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Theiner argues first that the Peasants' Revolt was not an isolated incident of violence in the fourteenth century, and then provides a short overview of how Gower and Froissart viewed the events. Gower is a "mirror of his age" (304) and so in the VC he defends the hierarchical order by turning the rebels into animals. These unnatural transformations (the animals are really monsters) lead to poetry that is neither beast-fable nor successful narrative (305). When the vision then turns into allegory, the references to the fall of Troy are likewise unconvincing. Many Trojan names "are strewn about pretty much at random, identifying no one in particular, but trying to convince the reader that what he has in front of him is a coherent allegory" (305). The resulting lack of true narrative and causation means that Gower does not really engage with the changes of history (as Froissart does in a limited way) and rather describes the revolt as "a state of being" (306). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Theiner, Paul Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Published Theiner, Paul. "The Literary Uses of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381." In Actes du VIe Congres de l'Association Internationale de Litterature Comparée. Ed. Cadot, Michel, et al. Stuttgart: Erich Bieber, 1975, pp. 303-306. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Erich Bieber, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource The Literary Uses of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Manuscripts of Gower's CA had standardized illustrations; mentions MS. Oxford New College 266 and New York MS. Morgan Library 126. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kolve, V. A. Published Kolve, V. A. "Chaucer and the Visual Arts." Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: Writers and their Background (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), p. 295 and n. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer and the Visual Arts. 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 Compares the Spanish translation Confision del Amante to the original CA, noting many differences, mostly minor, Concludes: 1) need for Confision to be re-edited; 2) changes would a) make Confision more emphatic, more pious, less political; b) de-emphasize England and British settings; c) make images more concrete. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Hamm, Robert Wayne. Published Hamm, Robert Wayne. An Analysis of the Confisyon del Amante, the Castillian Translation of Gower's Confessio Amantis. Ph. D. Dissertation. University of Tennessee, 1975. Dissertation Abstracts International 36.06. Restricted access at Proquest Theses & Dissertations: https://www.proquest.com/docview/302781893/fulltextPDF/1E51AB76F57541A0PQ/1?accountid=7122. Accessed June 21, 2022. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource An Analysis of the Confisyon del Amante, the Castillian Translation of Gower's Confessio Amantis. 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 Gower and Chaucer were friends, as is shown in CA. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Benson, Larry D. Published Benson, Larry D. "A Reader's Guide to Writings on Chaucer." In Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), pp. 332-33. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Reader's Guide to Writings on 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 Chaucer and the Latin Classics. Author/Editor Author/Editor Harbert, Bruce. Published Harbert, Bruce. "Chaucer and the Latin Classics." Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: Writers and Their Background. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975, p. 147. 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 Chaucer and the Latin Classics. 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 Gower never rhymes uninflected adjectives with inflected forms. [RGY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Donaldson, E. Talbot. Published Donaldson, E. Talbot. "The Manuscripts of Chaucer's Works." Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: Writers and Their Background. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975, p. 97. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Manuscripts of Chaucer's Works. 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 Notes examples where Gower relied on French and Latin, on rhythm, and on language and vocabulary for his poetic effects. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Davis, Norman. Published Davis, Norman. "Chaucer and Fourteenth-Century English." Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: Writers and Their Background. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975, pp. 62, 68, 70, 73, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80, 81, 83-84 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 Chaucer and Fourteenth-Century English. 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 Mentions Gower's use of London, particularly the Westminster area; argues that Gower's works are encyclopedic. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Brewer, Derek. Published Brewer, Derek. Gothic Chaucer. In Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and Their Background (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), pp. 12, 27-28, 30. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gothic 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 Compares Gower and Chaucer as men, poets, moral and political thinkers; Chaucer comes out the better poet, Gower the better moralist--although Kim finds more points of similarity than of difference. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kim, Sun Sook. Published Kim, Sun Sook. "Chaucer and Gower: A Comparative Study." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of South Carolina, 1975 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer and Gower: A Comparative Study. 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 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 Discusses references in the MO to Lombard merchants. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schless, Howard. Published Schless, Howard. "Transformations: Chaucer's Use of Italian." In Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and Their Background (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), pp. 195-96 Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transformations: Chaucer's Use of Italian. 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 Gower was ignorant of the mystical tradition, and was a critic of the church. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Shepherd, Geoffrey. Published Shepherd, Geoffrey. "Religion and Philosophy in Chaucer." In Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and Their Background (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), pp. 266. 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 Religion and Philosophy in 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 Argues that Chaucer know the CA and parodied it the "Canterbury Tales." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hanning, Robert W. Published Hanning, Robert W. "The Theme of Art and Life in Chaucer's Poetry." In George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), p. 21. 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 Theme of Art and Life in Chaucer's Poetry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Argues that Chaucer read the VC; briefly outlines VC and emphasizes its moral scope; maintains that Gower was a moralist and followed authority more than Chaucer. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mann, Jill. Published Mann, Jill. "Chaucer and the Medieval Latin Poets." In George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 172, 173n, 174-77, 177-79. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer and the Medieval Latin Poets. 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 Gower is a political philosopher to whom Chaucer dedicates his "Troilus and Criseyde." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wetherbee, Winthrop. Published Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Some Intellectual Themes in Chaucer's Poetry." In George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 75, 87. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Intellectual Themes in Chaucer's Poetry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower's attitude toward science, and his knowledge of its various aspects, were standard for literary men of his time. Unlike Chaucer, who apparently sometimes practiced what he described, Gower seems to draw most of his learning from books. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Manzalaoui, Mahmoud. Published Manzalaoui, Mahmoud. "Chaucer and Science." In Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and Their Background (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), pp. 228n, 229-30. 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 Chaucer and Science. 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 Frank considers Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women" as "Chaucer's first collection of tales told" (66), using Gower's "Confessio Amantis" for comparison in one instance, and observing more generally that the stories in each work "have a point"--in the case of Gower, a "moral scheme" which he "takes seriously"; in Chaucer, a "simple value scheme" which "he takes lightly." The individual tales in both collections, moreover, share an "easy, unimpeded succession of events" (67) that is not particularly consistent with modern taste and concerns, Frank tells us, and he offers a summary of Gower's "Mundus and Paulina" (CA, Book I, 761ff.) as an example. He details a "variety of possibilities for expanded treatment" in the tale--issues of "character and psychology" (68) irrelevant in Gower's brisk narrative which epitomizes for Frank the "power" and "appeal of bald story" (69). Chaucer's legend of Cleopatra is not quite as successful in this regard, even though both tales exemplify the "perfectly legitimate activity" of "the brief recording of a story" (71). The moral concerns of the CA and the love concerns of LGW--even the multiple concerns of "The Canterbury Tales"--Frank maintains, are fundamentally excuses to tell stories. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Frank, Robert Worth, Jr. Published Frank, Robert Worth, Jr. "The Legend of Good Women: Some Implications." In Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. Chaucer at Albany (New York: Burt Franklin, 1975), pp. 63-76. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "The Legend of Good Women": Some Implications. 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 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 Weiher argues that Gower and Chaucer write "Lucretia and Virginia stories that closely resemble one another" (7), despite the fact that they modify their classical sources in distinctive ways. In the former story, Gower's chief interest "lies in the sins of Aruns, not in the chastity or saintliness of Lucrece" (7-8). Most of Gower's alterations to this tale thus strengthen its similarity to the tale of "Virginia," where Apius Claudius's scheming is the central issue. Chaucer, by contrast, "adapts his classical sources in inverse fashion" (8). In each narrative he "uses the sinfulness of men to point up his real concern, the heroine's virtue" (9). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Weiher, Carol Published Weiher, Carol. "Chaucer's and Gower's Stories of Lucretia and Virginia." English Language Notes 14 (1976), pp. 7-9. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer's and Gower's Stories of Lucretia and Virginia 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 For Sklar, Book V of Gower's "Confessio"--focusing on the sin of avarice--is foundational to the complexities of Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice." First, how do we interpret the conflicted figure of Bassanio, who is both a spendthrift courting an heiress for her money, and "a romantic hero . . . capable of inspiring love" (500)? The contradiction is resolved in Bassanio's comparison of his beloved to the "golden fleece," making this the only Shakespeare play that refers to Jason and his quest. In the medieval mythographic tradition, Jason is both "admired for his valor," and condemned as a deceiver in love, just as Bassanio wins the lady, but breaks his word never to part with her ring (501). Book V of CA, which was known to Shakespeare, is a network of prototypes for the characters and themes of "The Merchant." Gower presents "two versions of the casket motif . . . [with] striking thematic and verbal parallels" to the play, as Genius's instruction on the arbitrary fortunes of love--"every mon mot take his chance" (2260), is followed by Portia's "You must take your chance" (II.1.44). For both poets, this "chance" may not reward the most deserving (503). A larger theme of Book V is "covetousness in love . . . a confusion in the mind of the lover between true emotion and love of money" (504-05). This "confusion" explains not only the mercenary goal of Bassanio's courtship, but the tendency of most Venetians to describe their deepest affections in monetary terms, not limited to Shylock's outcry "My daughter! My ducats!" (505). In CA, Jason's sin of avarice in love is perjury, a defective oath, a stratagem endemic to the culture of self-interest in Shakespeare's Venice (also his England?), and exposing the "double nature" of Bassanio (506-07). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sklar, Elizabeth S. Published Texas Studies in Language and Literature 18.3 (Fall 1976): 500-09. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bassanio's Golden Fleece. 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 Unexamined. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Kanno, Masahiko. Published Kanno, Masahiko. "Historical Present in Gower." Bulletin of Aichi University of Education 25 (1976): 45-49. 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 Historical Present in Gower. 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 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 Includes comparisons of CA and Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"; Gower's idea of the aging world; his use of "impersonal I"; Gower and Chaucer relations; quarrel and "Man of Law's" reference; literary principles; satiric technique; moral ideas. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Howard, Donald. Published Howard, Donald. The Idea of the Canterbury Tales. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, pp. 22, 23n, 46, 47-52, 53, 55, 60, 94, 110-11, 130, 131, 143, 152, 157, 184n, 225, 307, 308, 336. 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 Idea of the Canterbury Tales. 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 Itô divides his book into three parts, which, as he explained in personal correspondence, was reflective of "the 'trilogy' of trilingual Gower." The dustcover (a TO mappa mundi in deep red on a mauve background) he designed himself, in replication of the tripartite globe in London, British Library MS Cotton Tiberius A.iv, "and also suggesting the three continents . . . or the Three Estates." The jacket characterizes Itô's criticism overall: thoughtful, perceptive, attentive to small detail. The book, as he points out in the preface, "has not been written newly, but rather a collection [sic] of what I sporadically wrote during a score or more years of reading Gower. Therefore, there is some lack of thematic unity in it" (xii). Most of the individual chapters appeared prior to 1975 in Japanese journals. Part I, "On Gower's English Works," contains six essay/chapters: "The Sense of Correspondence in Confessio Amantis," "The Man of Law's Tale vs. Tale of Constance," "Chaucer and Gower as Story-tellers," "Three Versions of 'Apollonius of Tyre'," "Jason and Medea--A Story of Golden Love," and "Gower and Rime Royal." Part II, "On Gower's Non-English Works," contains four essay/chapters: "A Midsummer Nightmare--An Interpretation of Book I of Vox Clamantis," "On the English Translation (by E.W. Stockton) of Vox Clamantis," "Cinkante Balades: A Garland for a New King" [not previously published]. and "Omnia Vincit Amor--An Interpretation of Cronica Tripertita." Part III, "Gower and Rhetoric," contains five essay/chapters: "Paranomasia in Vox Clamantis," "Gower's Use of Rime Riche in Confessio Amantis," "Wordplay in Confessio Amantis," "Wordplay in Mirour de l'Omme" [not previously published], and "Gower's Knowledge of Poetria Nova." [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Itô, Masayoshi. Published Itô, Masayoshi. John Gower: The Medieval Poet. Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976. xiv; 309 pp. 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 John Gower, The Medieval Poet. 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 Surveys criticism of CB, discusses its subject matter as "generally conventional," and analyzes its "formal excellence" and unity (158) as a matter of "concantenation" of "topics, moods, associations, imagery, key words of phrases, allusions, sources, and various metrical devices" (163). Reads the individual ballades seriatim to show how they deal with "three kinds of love" (conjugal, courtly, and divine; 164), and constitute a "ballade sequence" that "has no end but a circular completeness and a peculiar unity" (179) reminiscent of the Middle English "Pearl" and some of "The Harley Lyrics." [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Itô, Masayoshi. Published Itô, Masayoshi. "'Cinkante Balades': A Garland for a New King." In Itô's "John Gower, The Medieval Poet" (Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976), pp. 156-80. Gower Subject Cinkante Balades 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 "Cinkante Balades": A Garland for a New King. 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 Itô claims to have located 2,356 examples of wordplay in MO (combining "adnominatio," "traductio," and "significatio"), discussing a large number of "interesting examples" here as "the visible peak of an iceberg" (252). He clarifies his categories and, by means of extensive examples, shows how in Gower "often uses wordplay to sharpen the semantic or conceptual contrast, aiming at logical clarity and satirical poignancy" (268-69). At times, Itô tells us, Gower repeats "the same word or cognate forms," evidently "pleasing and persuasive" to his audience, while at others, he uses wordplay to heighten "lyrical or emotive scenes." Wordplay in MO is often concentrated in rhyme position and, in some instances, capitalizes "contracted on forms peculiar to French (e.g., 'dire-d'Ire')" (269). [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Itô, Masayoshi. Published Itô, Masayoshi. "Wordplay in Mirour de l'Omme." In Itô's "John Gower, The Medieval Poet" (Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976), pp. 250-271. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Wordplay in Mirour de l'Omme. 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 Gower, like Chaucer and Langland, knew the Doctrine of Concupiscentia of Augustine; uses Gower as a contemporary source to corroborate points made Chaucer's attitudes to things such as humility, lechery, St. Valentine. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kellogg, Alfred L. Published Kellogg, Alfred L. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1976, pp. 58n, 72, 105n, 141n, 244n, 250, 257, 263-64n, 266n, 270, 272n, 335n. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature. 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 Beginning with orthographic, phonologic, and inflectional studies, and continuing through linguistic and narrative borrowings and transformations, attempts to demonstrate the cohesiveness of Gower's total oeuvre, and the culmination of his poetic, moral, and social visions in CA. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published Yeager, R. F. "John Gower's Poetic." Ph.D. Dissertation. Yale University, 1976. 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 John Gower's Poetic. 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 On Gower's general influence on Spenser, both as a source and as an analogue, including discussions of Gower's Falssemblant on Spenser; Theseus story used by him; Canacee story. Concludes that Gower had a substantial, though hardly overwhelming influence on "Faerie Queene." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nohrnberg, James. Published Nohrnberg, James. The Analogy of the Faerie Queene. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976, pp. 109, 271n, 318n, 383, 495n, 623, 641, 747n. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Analogy of the Faerie Queene. 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 Cites Gower (CA, Pro. 971) for the argument that man must die because he is composed of contrary elements. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rowe, Donald W. Published Rowe, Donald W. O Love, O Charite: Contraries Harmonized in Chaucer's Troilus. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976, p. 178n. 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 O Love, O Charite: Contraries Harmonized in Chaucer's Troilus. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Ito, Masayoshi, trans. Published Ito, Masayoshi, trans. A Translation of Confessio Amantis into Japanese. Bulletin of the Faculty of Education (Shizuoko University) 26 (1976): 53-62; 27 (1977): 81-92; 28 (1978): 73-84; 29 (1979): 39-50. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Review A translation into Japanese of twenty stories from the CA, including "Florent," "Ceix and Alcyone." and "Ulysses and Telegonus." Unexamined. [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 A Translation of Confessio Amantis into Japanese. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1976-1979 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 fourteenth century "possessed a strong sense of the past, a feeling for history and its bearing on the present" (401). What is unique to Chaucer and Gower is that although both "expressed the sentiment that the world had grown old, and while they both tended to cast the passing of time in moral terms, they also relied ultimately on personal sensibility to define the relationship between present and past" (403). Particularly the conclusion to the "Clerk's Tale" and the end of the CA provide moments where Chaucer and Gower "turn away from moralistic, clerical time and toward time as experience rooted in the psyche, what might be termed 'humanistic time'" (403). For Chaucer, the defining virtue of the Golden Age was constancy, precisely the virtue that Griselda embodies. It is the contemporary lack of constancy that the Clerk decries, and so his final lament compares the women of his time to debased coinage. Dean points out that it was ironically gold that caused the downfall of the Saturnian Golden Age. Griselda thus "embodies for the Clerk an ideal, to be invoked in poetry, whose virtue rebukes the present age of 'brassy' arrogance" (406). Gower's CA introduces the "world grown old" theme in its Prologue. Nebuchadnezzar's statue embodies in the shape of man as microcosm "the decline of virtue, specifically love or charity, in the macrocosm" (407). While the tone here is "disengaged and moralistic" (407), Gower also suggests, both in the Prologue and in Book 5's discussion of avarice, that the perfection of the Golden Age is located in man's psyche, in his innate sense of moderation or "mesure." The way back to the harmony of the past is through memory and poetry, a process symbolized by the poet Arion and put into practice through the stories of the CA. Gower makes Amans an emblem of division in love; like the senescent world, Amans is old and feeble. Amans's final encounter with Venus, a moment that is both "amusing and poignant" (411), allows the reader to experience time and its passing in a very personal fashion. In the end, for Chaucer and Gower it is not only that the quest for a clarification of the self leads to a recherche du temps perdu, but also that "the search for lost time leads to important insights about the self" (413). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dean, James Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Published Dean, James. "Time Past and Time Present in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale and Gower's Confessio Amantis." English Literary History 44.3 (1977), pp. 401-418. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1977 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource Time Past and Time Present in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale and 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 Gradon points out that Gower's Golden Age, described in the Prologue, already has "the whole hierarchical structure of the medieval state" (62), including the rule of law. To the modern reader, such references to justice may have "the air of being loose moral platitudes" (62), but Gradon argues in her essay that the opposite is the case. Of particular importance is Gower's usage of the word "ryhtwisnesse" and the terms "justice" and "equity." Gradon points out that in the MO 14195-98 Gower adopts the commonplace definition of Justice as rendering to each his due ("Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribunes," as Justinian's Institutes puts it). Medieval sources reveal that this definition was understood to refer in part to "the observance of pre-ordained hierarchical patterns" (64). As such, Justice meant obedience of superiors, fair-dealing to equals, and correction of inferiors. Even lawyers in the Middle Ages therefore understood the virtue of Justice to be a broader concept than merely a legal one, comprising instead a general idea of right conduct (and social relationships) that affects all human actions. Gradon next turns to Gower's notion of equity, which she compares to the maxim "Aequitas est justicia dulcore misericordiae temperate" ("Equity is justice tempered by the sweetness of mercy"; 66). Gradon shows that Gower opposes justice (or equity) to covetousness, a vice that is in turn remedied by love. The relevance of this to the CA is obvious, for the virtue of equity does not only apply to the state but also "enables a man to control himself by maintaining a balance between reason and will" (67). This also implies that "the theme which binds the whole poem together … is neither Empedoclean love nor yet the theme of caritas … rather the theme is equity or justice in its broad sense. That is to say, just as Gower requires righteousness, that is justice, for the right functioning of the state, so the Confessor requires righteousness of the lover; that is, self-examination and judgment, submission to the rule of reason and the right direction of the will" (70). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gradon, Pamela Published Gradon, Pamela. "John Gower and the Concept of Righteousness." Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic-Literary Studies 8 (1977), pp. 61-71. ISSN 0287-1629 Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower and the Concept of Righteousness Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In Shakespeare's Pericles, the character Gower describes the incestuous relationship of Antiochus and his daughter as follows: "But custom what they did begin / Was with long use accounted no sin" (1. Cho. 29-30). By an examination of the word "custom" in Shakespeare's other works, Boni demonstrates that Gower's "custom" is used in the sense of "inurement or accustomation" (36). While Gower's lines (adapted from CA 8.345-46) are to some degree proverbial, they also fit well with Shakespeare's use of "custom" elsewhere. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Boni, John Published Boni, John. "Gower's 'Custom' in Pericles: Shakespeare's Hand?" American Notes and Queries 16 (1977), pp. 35-36. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's 'Custom' in Pericles: Shakespeare's Hand? Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Phelan argues that the existence of a concordance of the CA will have a major impact on the study of Gower, if used appropriately. He suggests that "there is a strain of the unconscious in the diction of the ancient masters which goes beyond rhetorical principles; and critics need now to proceed beyond the concordance to the construction of a personal literary thesaurus – an idiosyncratic arrangement of the words of an author's language based on the careful consideration of the frequency and kinds of association" (461). On the basis of psychological and structuralist principles, Phelan maintains that the words which recur most frequently within a narrative "must form a network of associations which define in an existential way the central theme of the story" (464). The test case for this theory is the story of Florent in Book 1 of the CA. By means of a series of tables and calculations, Phelan arrives at a number of "first-level words" (467) that separate Gower's version from Chaucer's, both thematically and plot-wise. Gower's key terms are "covenant," "strengthe, "trowthe" and "schape," each of which receives detailed explication. In their totality these words reveal that the underlying trajectory of the narrative is one that "describes the development of the animus or masculine psyche" (476). In the end, then, "the semantic structure parallels and embraces the mythic structure" (472). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Phelan, Walter S Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Published Phelan, Walter S. "Beyond the Concordance: Semantic and Mythic Structures in Gower's Tale of Florent." Neophilologus 61 (1977), pp. 461-79. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1977 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource Beyond the Concordance: Semantic and Mythic Structures in Gower's Tale of Florent Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review While Gower "does nothing to call attention to his literary treatment of women in the Confessio" (239), it is clear that the work's sensitivity and compassion for the limitations of human nature is in part the result of "the almost total absence of negative female stereotypes and antifeminist propaganda in the Confessio" (239). Gower's positive treatment is especially evident in three narratives of women who are traditionally seen as "less than exemplary" (241), namely Xanthippe, Medea, and Anaxarathen. First of all, while the MO tells us only that Xanthippe was angry and contentious with her husband Socrates, the CA provides "some motivation for the wife's foul humor" (241). Gower also does not personify "Cheste" as a woman, and he removes the references to "clubbing or punishing of wives" (242). In context, then, the story serves as an example of a particular sin rather than as an accusation of women in general. Gower's Medea, inherited from Benoît de Sainte-Maure and Guido delle Colonne, has also been transformed. She does not dress up to impress Jason on his arrival (an action condemned by Guido), nor does she scheme with a duenna to seduce Jason in the duplicitous way Benoît describes it. However, while Gower is more sympathetic to young people as they fall in love, he does not idealize Medea's character: "While Medea is innocent and appealing when she first falls in love, something goes wrong with her as the story progresses. At the same time, the sincerity of Jason's initial love serves to emphasize his later weakness and treachery" (247). Since Gower's tale exemplifies "the abuse and misdirection of normal human sexuality" (248), the moral of the story is directed "at both men and women, eliminating antifeminist elements from the story" (248). Finally, in the tale of "Iphis and Araxarathen," the characters' social positions are reversed, and Araxarathen is now a maiden of lowly origins who is no longer described as haughty, and who has a legitimate reason for refusing the love of Iphis. In the end, "Gower's innovation is to divide the responsibility for the disaster [of Iphis' suicide] between the two characters, instead of reproducing a simplistic exemplum of female coldness" (250). Why did Gower alter his opinions of women from those expressed in the MO and the VC? The answer is that in the CA Gower changes his style from strict moral allegory and social satire to a "middel weie" between lust and lore, where his main subject is love, including its positive qualities. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burke, Linda Barney Published Burke, Linda Barney. "Women in John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Mediaevalia 3 (1977), pp. 239-259. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Women in John Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The MO, according to Olsson, "is more than an encyclopedia" (113). It is also a unified spiritual quest with a clear poetic structure, and it is this structure that Olsson aims to demonstrate. As a kind of penitential work, the MO teaches the sinner by what path he may come to a recognition of his Creator. This quest is symbolized by two stories that frame the work: the narrative of Adam's exile to a land of misery, and, at the end, the story of redemption through Christ and the Virgin. However, if the mood of the poem is devotional, why then does the middle section of the poem indulge in social complaint and estates satire? Olsson's answer is that the integrity of the poem rests on the fact that it provides a mirror of man's entire moral nature. More precisely, there are four mirrors that "gave Gower the moral coordinates for his poem" (116). These four perspectives are the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. While three of the virtues attend to personal life, the second, justice, is concerned with man's relationship with his neighbor, and with society as a whole. Olsson further reviews the literary tradition of the virtues to demonstrate that they are invariably seen as "interdependent" (117). As the second part of the MO's Latin title (the Speculum Meditantis) indicates, it is the reader's duty to meditate on the mirrors before him and to cultivate a moral disposition that in turn leads to a virtuous life. After this general introduction, Olsson next turns to a detailed analysis of Gower's allegory in relation to the work of such writers as Cicero, Alain de Lille, and Brunetto Latini, as well as to such vernacular works as The Book of Vices and Virtues. In the process, Olsson discusses a variety of related issues, ranging from Gower's alterations to the conventional debate of Body and Soul, to the lack of a pitched battle between the vices and virtues in Gower's account. Other issues that are discussed include Gower's predominant use of the Old Testament for his exempla, the MO's general progress from general knowledge to knowledge of the self (a progression that explains how the virtue of justice provides a bridge between the initial "psychomachy" and the self-application of the final mirrors), and the nature of kingship. Olsson further suggests that whereas the first two mirrors (prudence and justice) provide the knowledge to judge the reader's "amour seculer," the last two (fortitude and temperance) "show the potential for appeal" (139) and are "ordered as pleas for His [God's] grace, and as gifts of the Holy Spirit, gifts of strength and wisdom" (139). Finally, Olsson argues that the work that most closely approximates the form of the MO is the brief twelfth-century poem, Le Livre des Manières by Etienne de Fougères, and that in relation to other medieval moral books, the MO's achievement lies in finding "a congruence of poetical form, inner or moral perception, and the idea of the cardinal virtues" (148). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Olsson, Kurt O Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Published Olsson, Kurt O. "The Cardinal Virtues and the Structure of John Gower's Speculum Meditantis." Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1977), pp. 113-148. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1977 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource The Cardinal Virtues and the Structure of John Gower's Speculum Meditantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In 1927, Karl Brunner recognized the CA as a source for Ben Jonson's "Volpone," an attribution disregarded by subsequent editors. Friedenreich believes that Brunner was right in pointing to a story from Book 5 of the CA where a greedy steward panders his wife to the king. In Volpone, too, sleeping with a young woman is proposed as a medical remedy, and a number of verbal parallels between the two accounts are quite striking. Other connections between the two works include references to avarice and jealousy, two themes of Gower's Book 5. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Friedenreich, Kenneth Published Friedenreich, Kenneth. "Volpone and the Confessio Amantis." South Central Bulletin 37 (1977), pp. 147-150. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Volpone and the Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Olsson argues that in Chaucer's CT and in Gower's CA the apparently simplistic exemplum "becomes a complex form" (186). Olsson begins by pointing out that even in Gower's MO we already have a variety of exemplum types. The form can encompass the similitude or "homoeosis" (e.g., the tale of Ulysses and the Sirens), the precedential exemplum (e.g, the story of Codrus), the use exemplars (in part 3 of the MO), or the complex and meditative mode used in the final section of the MO, the life of the Virgin and Christ. Of particular interest in this overview are Olsson's comments on the overlap between exemplarity and allegory. In the CA, the exempla "demand our attention because the referent – which can be, beyond a specific idea, an auditor or speaker – does not always suit the narrative and because the tale and its referents can both be drawn into a fiction" (194). For example, the Tale of Rosiphelee suits the needs of Amans in Book 4, but is contradicted by the final message of the book. The reason is that in Book 4 love is judged according to nature, whereas in Book 8 the standard is reason (195). The exemplarity of Gower's stories thus "rests on the rhetoric: As the context of argument changes, tales and ideas assume a new value in the whole, and the result is an integral and more adequate insight into the complexity of human experience, as well as a fuller grasp of what a 'reule' demands. . . . In Gower's rhetoric, as in Chaucer's, the story often encourages the quest of a truth which is greater than that expressed in the tale itself" (196). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Olsson, Kurt O Published Olsson, Kurt O. "Rhetoric, John Gower, and the Late Medieval Exemplum." Medievalia et Humanistica 8 (1977), pp. 185-200. ISSN 0076-6127 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rhetoric, John Gower, and the Late Medieval Exemplum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Harder argues that Gower's tale of Lucrece makes eclectic use of both Livy and Ovid's versions of the story. In particular, from Livy Gower borrows specifics about the siege of Ardea, the kinship of Collatine and Arrons, the mention of a companion for Arrons on the journey to Lucrece's house, and the bearing of Lucrece's body to the market place or forum. Gower's use of two different sources (likely open by his side as he composed) is also the reason why Gower mistakenly treats Collatia as both a section and gate of Rome. The only detail that neither source explains concerns Gower's naming of the rapist as Arrons rather than Sextus. Harder wonders whether the political context of the 1390's may have some bearing on the change, but ultimately admits that he has "yet no solution" (5). Harder concludes with some observations about Chaucer's use of Livy, Augustine, and Ovid. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Harder, Henry L Published Harder, Henry L. "Livy in Gower's and Chaucer's Lucrece Stories." Publications of the Missouri Philological Association.2 (1977), pp. 1-7. 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 Livy in Gower's and Chaucer's Lucrece Stories Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review An annotated listing of Gower studies in print through 1975. Does not include manuscript listings or dissertations, except where these are of significant importance. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published Yeager, R. F. A Bibliography of John Gower Materials Through 1975. Mediaevalia 3 (1977): 261-306. Gower Subject 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 A Bibliography of John Gower Materials Through 1975. 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 In addition to a brief biographical introduction of Gower, Miller prints Eric W. Stockton's translation of VC, 122 (196-208) on the obligations of knighthood and how love threatens knightly performance of duty (Miller, pp. 194-206 with notes, mostly textual, from Stockton); Stockton, pp. 161-68, 171-73, 178-79, 181 (VC on Parson, Clerk, Monk, and Nun); (Miller, pp, 215-28 with notes mostly from Stockton); Stockton, pp. 208-09 (VC on plowmen); (Miller, pp. 232-34, notes from Stockton); Stockton, pp. 182-84 (VC on Friars); (Miller, pp. 264-68, notes from Stockton). Author/Editor Author/Editor Miller, Robert P., ed. Published Miller, Robert P., ed. Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds. London: Oxford University Press, 1977. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Biogrpahy 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 Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds. 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 For Gower, the Subject Index lists item nos. 188, 262-63, 322, 505 (duplicate of no. 262), 524, 1565, 1730, 1743, and 1747; on Gower-Chaucer connections and mutual influences, with some brief annotations and book reviews. Author/Editor Author/Editor Baird, Lorrayne Y. Published Baird, Lorrayne Y. A Bibliography of Chaucer, 1964-1973. Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1977. Gower Subject Bibliographies, Reports, and Reference Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Bibliography of Chaucer, 1964-1973. 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 Gower's best poem is the VC, for its careful use of detail; Gower is moral and somewhat pedestrian; Gower and Chaucer were friends; Gower was a moralist. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gardner, John. Published Gardner, John. The Life and Times of Chaucer. New York: Knopf, 1977, pp. 16-17, 18, 59, 117, 128, 130, 136, 164, 225, 238, 249, 253, 255, 294. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Life and Times 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 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 Brief reference to Gower/Chaucer friendship, Gower's interests, and the relationship of Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women" to Gower's CA. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Owen, Charles A., Jr. Published Owen, Charles A., Jr. Pilgrimage and Storytelling in the Canterbury Tales: The Dialectic of 'Ernest' and 'Game.' Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977, pp. 22n, 25, 74. 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 Pilgrimage and Storytelling in the Canterbury Tales: The Dialectic of "Ernest" and "Game." 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 Gower is an "uncompromising moralist"; grinds out couplets in a negatively "professional" manner; also notes that Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale" contains a jibe at Gower. [RFY1981] Published Burlin, Robert B. Chaucerian Fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977, pp. 133, 151, 196 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucerian Fiction. 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 As his title suggests, Pearsall's book is a survey that covers a broad ground. Gower is one part of a six-part chapter on "Court Poetry" that also includes four sections on Chaucer and "Fifteenth-Century Court Tradition." His overall assessment of Gower is at once qualified and complimentary: " . . . he exerted little influence in the fifteenth century, was not much imitated, and seems to have been more respected than read, a misfortune which we may both understand, for he is exceedingly well-mannered and has a sense of decorum which can sometimes lead to monotony, and deplore: the example of his purity and integrity of style and the ease of his versification, which quite matches that of Chaucer within the simpler confines of the octosyllabic couplet, might have been more salutary for a lesser breed of writers than Chaucer's extravagant and inimitable singularity" (208). Unsurprisingly, except for a single mention each of the "Mirour" ("a lengthy moral treatise in Anglo-Norman") and the "Vox Clamantis" (a "violent diatribe in Latin on the ills of contemporary society"), Pearsall's focus is the "Confessio Amantis": "[Gower's] great claim as a poet is that in the frame of the 'Confessio' and in the inset narratives he responds to human situations with a warmth and range of imaginative sympathy which enables him to 'realise,' in a way more compelling than any prescription, the gentleness, courtesy, nobility, and generosity of spirit that lie at the heart of 'fyn lovynge' and, with that, of fine living" (211). Pearsall's summation is perceptive and instructive: "Gower, for whatever role as moralist or guardian of the nation's conscience he cast himself for, understood in his poetry the 'civilisation of the heart'" (212). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek. Published Pearsall, Derek. Old English and Middle English Poetry. Routledge History of English Poetry, vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. Pp. 208-12. 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 Old English and Middle English Poetry. 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 Ito's is a prose translation of the complete "Confessio Amantis," using Macaulay's edition. It is extensively annotated: approximately a third of the volume is devoted to explanatory notes, paying special attention to the needs of those Japanese readers and scholars whose knowledge of the history and socio-cultural norms of the European Middle Ages might require furbishing. It also contains a bibliography of relevant primary and secondary sources.[ RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ito, Masayoshi, trans. Published Ito, Masayoshi, trans. John Gower: "Confessio Amantis," A Translation into Modern Japanese. (Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1978); 2nd ed. (Tokyo, 1988). Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Confessio Amantis," A Translation into Modern Japanese. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 1988 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Mainzer, Conrad Published Mainzer, Conrad. "Albertano of Brescia's Liber Consolationis et Consilii as a Source-Book of Gower's Confessio Amantis." Medium Ævum 47 (1978), pp. 88-90. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Mainzer's note demonstrates that two series of aphoristic statements in the CA provide evidence of Gower's use of Albertano of Brescia's "Liber Consolationis et Consilii" (also the ultimate source of Chaucer's "Tale of Melibee"). The first series is found in Book 7 (lines 3149*-3167*) and consists of statements about Pity attributed to the apostle James, Cassiodorus (both in the second recension), and Constantine (in the third recension). The second series is found in Book 3 (glosses at lines 2220 and 2225) and figures aphorisms said to be from Seneca and "Apostolus" (St. Paul). [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 Albertano of Brescia's Liber Consolationis et Consilii as a Source-Book of Gower's Confessio Amantis 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 Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower's description of the drunkard in Book 6 of the CA includes the detail that when the drunkard wakes up in the morning he says "Nou baillez ça the cuppe" (6.60). In the A-text of Piers Plowman we find a "striking correspondence: on waking, "the furste word that he [Glotoun] spac was 'wher is the cuppe?'" (102; qtd from Passus 5.213). The only difference is the insertion of the French words, which Gower, "like other Englishmen" (102), perhaps found suitable for a drunkard. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Regan, Charles L. Published Regan, Charles L. "John Gower, John Barleycorn, and William Langland." American Notes and Queries 16 (1978), p. 102. 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 John Gower, John Barleycorn, and William Langland 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 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 Middleton undertakes to describe the essential spirit of Ricardian Poetry. By means of a survey that includes Chaucer, Langland, Gower, Thomas Usk, and the Lollard Knights, Middleton suggests that the essential feature of this late-fourteenth century literature is its aim "to be a 'common voice' to serve the 'common good'" (95). This public poetry is not topical in nature, but is rather defined by "a constant relation of speaker to audience within an ideally conceived worldly community, a relation which has become the poetic subject" (95). This is a secular poetry, and "its central pieties are worldly felicity and peaceful, harmonious communal existence" (95). It "speaks for bourgeois moderation, a course between the rigorous absolutes of religious rule on the one hand, and, on the other, the rhetorical hyperboles and emotional vanities of the courtly style" (95). As a result, even the topic of love has a clearly public dimension. Thomas Usk, in his Testament of Love presents himself as "a vernacular philosopher of love," but his more immediate concern is with the trials of his public career. Gower's Testament of Love, the CA, is likewise written out of the understanding that love is above all "a communal and historical bond" (97) rather than a transcendental force or a merely erotic drive. The notion of public poetry also reveals the similarities between Gower and Langland. Both are "essentially 'one-poem' writers" (98) who revised their work to keep it socially current. In addition, their poetry addresses the entire community rather than a coterie or patron. Even when Gower writes to Richard II, the king "is not the main imagined audience, but an occasion for gathering and formulating what is on the common mind" (107). This understanding of audience may also have occasioned Gower's cancellation of his reference to Chaucer in the CA, for such a reference, while accessible to a coterie audience, would not suit the "commune" at large. The attempt to speak for all citizens, also evident in Gower's "In Praise of Peace," brings with it a unique style. Middleton calls it a "plain style" that is "socially and psychologically well suited to the presentation of lay morality and large experiential truths" (98). For instance, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales represents an attempt to let each pilgrim present his own experience of the world in his own speech, and so the narratorial "I" stretches itself "to the point of transparency" by occupying "the whole field of moral vision" (99). Another word that describes this plain style is "common," whether in its adjectival form (for instance, in the Ciceronian "common profit," or res publica) or as a noun (either to denote the commonwealth as a whole, or specifically the third estate, the commons). All of these forms demonstrate "its uniformly non-abstract, non-speculative cast" (101) as well as the fact that the word is hardly ever used in a pejorative sense. The style of public poetry is well suited to a vision of poetry as "a mediating activity" (101). Ricardian poets invariably seek out a "middle style" (101), between "ernest and game," and "sumwhat of lust, sumwhat of lore" (qtd on 101-02). For Gower this medial course implies "a perspective less exclusively detached and cosmic, more implicated in, and circumscribed by, the mortal world" (102). This perspective is evident in the character of Gower-as-Amans, which Middleton calls "an implicated speaking presence" (102). Moreover, the whole enterprise of telling old exempla presents "a 'middle weie' between past and future, between truth and our need for it" (102). In the Latin colophon to the CA this middle way is associated with a notion of labour, for Gower locates his enterprise "between work and leisure" ("inter labores et ocia"; qtd on 101). The view that poetic composition for the instruction of others is a fully legitimate way of doing one's share of the world's work lends surprising dignity to the otherwise fairly modest claims of poetry. Gower claims to speak for the "common vois" and what this voice seeks is above all peace and social harmony. This explains why Gower writes "In Praise of Peace," as well as why Amans opposes Genius' argument that war confers glory which wins love. In relation to Amans, Middleton suggests that we should not dismiss the figure of the persona (Chaucer-the-Pilgrim, Gower-the-lover, Will-the-truthseeker) as merely a fictive character and therefore dramatically circumscribed. Even though the persona might not precisely represent the opinions of the author, we should nevertheless take him "seriously" (108), for the suggestion he offers is that in this life we will never transcend worldly experience. As such, the persona represents a heroic effort to achieve a common vantage point, an effort that is finally not treated satirically (incidentally, here and in the Appendix Middleton interacts with John Peter's work on satire and complaint). Indeed, this reality of living experientially is demonstrated by the fact that the figures of instruction (Genius as well as Will's teachers) are "a remarkably inept lot and not especially well disposed to help the seeker" (110). The limits to knowledge and perfection in the here and now are also evident in the lack of poetic closure in Piers Plowman and the CA, for these works do not end "in world-transcendence, but in some form of return to the world" (111). In her own form of closure, Middleton leaves it for others to speculate as to the historical causes for the public poetry that flourished in Ricardian England. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Middleton, Anne Published Middleton, Anne. "The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II." Speculum 53 (1978), pp. 94-114. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations In Praise of Peace 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 Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II 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 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 Peck, Russell A. Published Peck, Russell A.. "Kingship and Common Profit in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1978 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Review Russell Peck argues that in the political and social turmoil of the fourteenth century, Gower turns to classical stories to find certainty and perspective and to provide a kind of social commentary that is regenerative, not only for the common good, but also for the individual person. In fact, the individual and the state are two sides of the same coin and man is "a double entity, both social and individual" (xxi). As such, kingship is really a form of maturity, self-rule, and rationality. Gower's "notion of social structure is thus interwoven with his theory of ethics, psychology, and theology" (xxi). Peck suggests that these are some of the hallmarks of Gower's ideology and he traces these ideas in chronological fashion through the various books of the CA. Peck explains that the Prologue to the CA lays out several of Gower's major themes. Peck suggests that Gower operates with the Augustinian model of faculty psychology, which divides the mind into three faculties: Memory, Intellect, and Will. The will is the loving faculty, but through sin it often gets stuck in narcissism rather than true knowledge. It is this selfishness that causes social division, a theme that is portrayed in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Peck then surveys the various historical problems that Gower mentions – e.g., the Peasants' Revolt and the Papal Schism – and shows that for Gower the issue is always one of individual responsibility. Despite Gower's pessimistic picture of contemporary degeneration and his eventual disillusionment with Richard II, the Prologue ends with an optimistic note that common profit may yet be found through individual reform. Book I begins the Boethian journey of self-discovery. The mode of confession operates here as "a kind of psychoanalysis" (30). Instrumental in this process is Genius, whose origins Peck briefly traces, and whom Peck associates with the mental faculty "ingenium" (closely linked to the imagination). In Book I, Genius weaves his tales around the theme of community. For instance, the Tale of Florent ends in "the mutual respect of true community" (49). Amans is thus instructed to leave behind the narcissism of pride, the cupidity which keeps him from regaining his true kingship, and to seek out common profit instead. Book 2 is equally political, particularly when Gower discusses the sin of supplantation. Gower argues that the seeker after singular profit will lose all through poetic justice, whereas the seeker of common profit will be rewarded (66-67). Books 3 and 4 deal less with common profit, even though "the motif of kingship is considerably enlarged here" (79). Instead, Gower chooses to develop the story of Amans' infatuation. Peck notes that Genius does not always seem consistent here. Whereas at first Genius seems to suggest that the "sexual urge almost excuses many a crime" (85), in Book V he will strongly endorse virginity. According to Peck, this fits the structure of the CA which uses the device of argumentation to proceed by opposition and debate (86). Book 5 is the turning point in the poem. Genius becomes increasingly more reflective and sober. The reason is that the discourse on religions leaves him embarrassed about the cuckoldry of the gods and the lascivious nature of Venus. However, Peck also points out that Genius is ultimately a structural device rather than a psychologically rich character (105). The rest of the chapter on Book 5 looks at kingship and common profit in four tales: the Tale of Virgil's Mirror, the Tale of Medea and Jason, the Tale of Adrian and Bardus, and the Tale of Paris and Helen. In the second half of the CA, the focus shifts "from categories of sin to the general psychology of willfulness" (125). As a result, in Book 6 the focus is less on Drunkenness and Delicacy (species of Gluttony) and our attention is instead "turned to willful Amans' desires as he describes how besotted he is in love" (126). Within this scheme, then, sorcery and delicacy are forms of fantasy that allow the selfish will to disguise itself and to adapt reality to its own wishes (128). Book 7, structurally the most important book in the CA (140), is about the "governance of will by wit and reason" and is "an antidote to all the sins discussed in the poem" (125). Instead of a confession, we now get a sermon. The book defines man's role in a universe that the medieval humanist Gower describes as a kind of "cosmic community" (141). Book 8, according to Peck, is about the "rediscovery of right relationships" (161), about gaining perspective, and about the voyage home. Incest, the sin described in Book 8, is the crime of narcissism and immoderation, and stands in opposition to community and the golden mean. The Tale of Apollonius is a demonstration of how this sin can be overcome through the kind of kingship and self-governance that follows the five points of policy laid out in Book 7 (168-69). The tale provides a fitting ending for the CA, because Amans, like Apollonius is in exile and needs to recover his (spiritual) kingship. After Amans goes "Homward" (8.2967), Gower ends with a prayer for the state of England, an ending which "reminds us of Chaucer's Retraction or the conclusion to Troilus and Criseyde" (184) because of its movement to a larger community in which man can have faith. [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 Kingship and Common Profit in Gower's Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Southern Illinois UP, 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 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 Hamm, R. Wayne Published Hamm, R. Wayne. "A Critical Evaluation of the Confisyon del Amante, the Castilian Translation of Gower's Confessio Amantis." Medium AEvum 47 (1978), pp. 91-106. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Review Whereas earlier scholars such as Manly and Russell were primarily interested in tracing the Portuguese translation (and its translator) of the CA in the historical records, Hamm seeks to assess the quality of the Castilian prose translation. Hamm divides his article into four sections: Changes in Tone, Style, and Emphasis; Conscious Changes or Emendations; Unconscious Changes (primarily errors and mistranslations); and Changes in Textual Machinery, Organization, and Structure. Overall, Hamm finds the translation "surprisingly faithful to the English version" (92). Some differences include "a de-emphasis of the poem's English setting" (93), less focus on politics, a more devout tone, and (in contrast to the last point) an increase in sexually overt language. The translator reduced a lot of Gower's padding (especially the poetic tags used to fill out the line), yet added new embellishments. Some of the most dramatic changes are the omission of 419 lines in Book 4, the extensive rewriting of the Tale of Deianira and Nessus, and the addition of a long and artistic speech by the emperor in the Tale of Constantine and Silvester. Much of the Latin framework of the CA is removed, yet a new introduction and synoptic index are supplied. The result of all this is "a highly sensitive and intelligent interpretation of letter and spirit of Gower's original" (105). [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 A Critical Evaluation of the Confisyon del Amante, the Castilian Translation of Gower's Confessio Amantis. 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 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 Cherniss examines the origins and characteristics of the allegorical figures Venus, Cupid, Nature, and Genius (as well as the concepts of Will and Reason). While the CA attempts to create some coherence out of these figures – specifically a reconciliation of natural love and charity – Cherniss feels that the result is often dissatisfying. Venus and Cupid both embody a natural love, and they seem morally neutral. This neutrality is also seen in Nature (for instance, in the tolerant attitude to incest expressed in her name). Here Gower follows Jean de Meun more than Alain de Lille. Cherniss further points out that "neither Venus nor Nature are permanently allied with Reason in the Confessio" (12). The result is that Genius is caught between representing Reason and the other figures. In general, "Genius is more fully the champion of Reason and Christianity than of Nature and Venus" (13). The only way to reconcile the two sides is to see Genius as representing human nature. The problematic relationship between Venus and Genius becomes especially apparent when Genius substitutes the sin of incest for lechery (what Venus condones) in Book 8. Cherniss argues that Gower deals with lechery in Book 7, where he discusses chastity. In the same book, Genius appeared to give up his role as confessor for Venus, yet later in Book 8 it is not clear whether he is still her servant. Indeed, the conclusion of the CA, where Amans comes to recognize his old age, struggles to sort out the various and conflicting meanings of the major allegorical figures. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cherniss, Michael D. Published Cherniss, Michael D.. "The Allegorical Figures in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Res Publica Litterarum 1 (1978), pp. 7-20. 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 Allegorical Figures in Gower's Confessio Amantis 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 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 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 Review Byrd describes four instances in early English literature where the phrase "blanche fever," or a variant, occurs--Gower's CA VI.39, Chaucer's TC 1.916; "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale "41, and William Caxton's translation of Raoul le Févre, "The History of Jason." Setting out to explore the "importance of blanche fever and its relation to courtly love" (57), Byrd does not distinguish blanche fever ("fevers whyte" in "Cuckoo") from other forms or stages of love sickness, and he tallies familiar symptoms of chills (sometimes alternating with high temperatures), sleeplessness, thirst, loss of reason, and growing pale. He mentions that the English phrase derives from French usage (pp. 57 and 63), and aligns blanche fever with another term associated with love-sickness--"access" or "accesse"--observing that the two have "the same symptoms," that they "are obviously related," and that "poets used the two terms interchangeably to refer to love-sickness in the courtly love system" (62). He also equates blanche fever with "the grene sekeness" without discussing the latter phrase, treating them as a single disease which "like any sickness . . . has definite symptoms" (64), once again leaving blanche fever indistinct. Byrd does observe that "Gower's thirstiness," which characterizes blanche fever in CA VI.236-43, is "caused by Love-Drunkenness, a vice which belongs to Gluttony" (59), the topic of Book VI. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Byrd, David G. Published Byrd, David G. "Blanche Fever: The Grene Sekeness." Ball State University Forum 19.3 (1978): 56-64. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Blanche Fever: The Grene Sekeness. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 present study examines the traditional figures of speech--metaphor, simile, personification, metonymy and synecdoche, and oxymoron, along with certain subcategories--in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.' Two chapters discuss the figures in some detail. They consider, as well, some important themes and tones in the 'Confessio' and the way in which Gower's figurative language either creates or emphasizes these themes. The core of the study, however, is provided by four appendices. Appendix A breaks the poem into its separate books and examines the occurrence of figurative language within the three main contexts: Amans, Genius, and Tales. The appendix offers both a line-count of figurative language and the percentages that these lines make up. Appendix B provides a visual representation of the information presented in Appendix A. In B the different contexts are represented by different colors of shading. By breaking the entire poem into ten-line segments and by charting how many lines in each segment are involved in figurative language, the chart vividly shows the peaks and valleys of figurativeness in the 'Confessio.' Appendix C examines one type of figure at a time. Again, breaking the poem into separate books and separate contexts, it lists the location of each figure of speech, its type, the "literal term" (what the poet is talking about, as nearly as it can be determined) and the 'figurative area' (the realm from which the poet has drawn his imagery for his figure of speech). Finally, Appendix D examines again the imagery content of Gower's figures, but from a different angle. Breaking down the figure by content rather than by type, the appendix makes certain patterns of occurrence more readily visible than they are in other appendices." [eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Greene, Linda Louise. Published Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Arkansas, 1978. Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1978): 3567A. 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 Lust and Lore: Figures of Speech in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "John Gower's assertion that the tales in the 'Confessio Amantis' are 'ensamples' of particular vices or virtues has variously been challenged, ignored, or misinterpreted by critics seeking to explain the relation of the tales to the confessional framework of the poem. However, an analysis of the changes that Gower made in the sources of fifteen tales from Books I and II of the 'Confessio' reveals that he consistently altered his sources in order to transform them into exempla of the Sins. But beyond adapting his source material as illustrations of vices and virtues, Gower's transformations are aimed at integrating the tales more subtly into the whole movement of the poem. This final transformation of his sources into a functioning part of the larger fiction marks the highpoint of Gower's art, for here he has not only transformed his sources, but he has also transformed the idea of 'ensamples' from isolated tales into integral parts of a complex work of art." [eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Shaw, Judith Davis. Published Dissertation Abstracts International 38 (1978): 6709A. 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 "Confessio Amantis": Gower's Art in Transforming His Sources into Exempla of the Seven Deadly Sins Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower is Chaucer's friend; points out, contra Thomas Speght (1598), that Gower may not have been a lawyer; Gower and Chaucer have different temperaments, though both are learned, secular poets; Gower is "far-sighted" in his criticism of rebels (Peasants' Revolt); Gower may have switched the dedication of CA from Richard II to Henry after 4 February 1399 (death of John of Gaunt) on the grounds that Henry was not called "of Lancaster" until after that time. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Brewer, Derek S. Published Brewer, Derek S. Chaucer and His World. London: Methuen, 1978, pp. 69, 84, 138, 209, 212. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Biography of Gower Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer and His World. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 built the CA around a union of two traditions--courtly love and penance. Central images are of priest/physician and lover/sick man. Studies the tradition in a range of literature from the penitentials and Alanus de Insulis's "De Planctu Naturae" through CA. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fitzpatrick, John F. Published Fitzpatrick, John F. "Courtly Love and the Confessional in English Literature from 1215 to John Gower." Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University, 1978. Dissertation Abstracts International A39.02. Full text accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses; accessed December 5, 2022. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Courtly Love and the Confessional in English Literature from 1215 to John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 German. Erzgräber's is a survey of English literature's rise at the end of the fourteenth century through Chaucer and Gower to the level of French and German poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. (Langland, whom he sees as a religious poet, becomes more prominent after the Reformation.) Although Gower appears throughout by way of comparison with Chaucer and Langland, primary discussion is localized at 224-27 and 239-246. In the latter pages he discusses the three major works, dwelling primarily on the "Vox Clamantis" and the "Confessio Amantis," with brief consideration of the "Mirour de l'Omme." He points out affinities with Boethius and the frequent reliance on Ovid, calls Gower's style "graphisch" (227), comparing it favorably to Chaucer's "malerischen" style. He presents Gower as a "powerful critic of his times," and positions him in the company of Robert Manning, William of Waddington, and Dan Michel of Northgate (239). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Erzgräber, Willi. Published Erzgräber, Willi. "Langland, Gower, Chaucer." In Willi Erzgraber. Europaisches Spatmittelalter. Wiesbaden: Athenaion; 1978, pp. 221-74. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Langland, Gower, Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 article opens with a reference to Phillippa of Lancaster, who took the Paynes with her from England to Portugal, and a description of the Payne coat of arms. Further information is to be found in a declaration made by King John III in 1535, concerning a petition by one Christovão Pinto de Paym, and it offers some details of the Payne line of descent: "Christovão was the legitimate son of Ruy Lopez Paym and grandson of Isabell Paym, legitimate daughter of Valentym Paym, noble of the household of King John I, who came to England with the Queen Felipa d'Alemcastro...." It is known that Tomalim Paym was acoompanied by his brother Roberto, a member of Queen Phillippa's household, according to a document dated 1402 which mentions Ruberte Paym. It was this man who translated John Gower's Confession Amantis into Portuguese, an undertaking already completed when King Edward was putting the finishing touches on his own composition, the Leal Conselhiero. In his prologue Edward states that he always names his source material, as John Gower has done in the CA, the Portuguese version of which figures in the list of the King's books under the title of "O Amante" (The Lover). This was his own, personal copy, not a borrowed one. Unfortunately, the Portuguese version made by Roberto Paym has disappeared, and we must make do with the Medieval Castilian version based on the Portuguese one. The Castilian CA is preceded by the following lines: "This book is called confession of the lover which was composed by Juan Goer native of the Kingdom of England. And it was rendered in the Portuguese language by Roberto Paim, native of the said Kingdom and canon of the city of Lisbon. And afterwards it was turned into the Castilian language by Juan de Cuenca neighbor of the city of Huete." How did the Portuguese version of this work fall into the hands of Juan de Cuenca? One explanation is that the Queen, Dona Leonor, or someone of her household, took the manuscript from King Edward's library to Spain. Naturally, the Queen, in conflict with her brother-in-law and co-Regent, Prince Pedro, had more important issues on her mind. But this was not necessarily true of some clergyman of her entourage, a Spaniard who was familiar with Portuguese, perhaps Juan de Cuenca himself. Roberto Paim took as his text for translation the first version, and there is no reason to believe that it contained any serious errors. The random selection of two extracts for comparison, those dealing with the legend of Alceone and Caix (Alceone and Ceix, in the Castilian), show that the translation is sure, neither too verbose, nor with any major omissions. Certain phrases and expressions do take on a particular Hispanic flavour, in the Castilian translation, however. For example, the oath "be seint Julien" becomes "by St. James" in the Castilian: "jurovos por Santiago." The remainder of the article is given over to background discussion of Gower's life, the versions of the CA, and the poem's various moral purposes: there is also a resume of the eight books of the CA. Singled out for special attention are the first ten chapters, where Gower paints a black picture of the religious and social situation in England and elsewhere; the allegorical framework of the CA and many of the legends and tales are recounted under the heading of one or the other of the Seven Capital Sins. [Pat Odber. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 2.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Martins, Mário, S. J Published Martins, Mário, S. J. "Dum Poema inglês de John Gower e da sua tradução do português para o castelhano." Didaskalia 9 (1979), pp. 413-432. ISSN 0253-1674 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 Dum Poema inglês de John Gower e da sua tradução do português para o castelhano. 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 Burnley's book argues that for authors like Gower and Chaucer, "culture, whether courtly or scholastic, was international and multi-lingual; the linguistic boundaries which trouble modern critics did not constrain their consciousness, and the connotations and associations of the words they used extended into the literary traditions of French and Latin" (8). Gower's trilingual poetry, for example, shows that for Gower language was largely a question of stylistic register. In addition, Chaucer and Gower's audience must have been composed of educated men like civil servants and lawyers who would have had the linguistic competence to appreciate the rich philosophical and ethical complexity of their thought and language. After Burnley's introduction, Gower appears sporadically throughout the book, most prominently in chapters 1 ("The Tyrant") and 4 ("The Philosopher"). In the former, Burnley describes Gower's political convictions and his method of contrasting the "rex tyrannus" with the exemplary king. Burnley defends Gower against allegations of sycophancy and argues that Gower tended to dissolve real historical kings into exemplary figures in line with (for Gower) salient historical and rhetorical patterns. While Richard II was young, Gower saw himself as Aristotle advising Alexander, but he gradually came to envision himself more as Seneca restraining the madness of Nero. Burnley then describes how the Senecan tradition throughout the Middle Ages viewed tyranny as primarily a psychological problem, and thus signified by the presence of cruelty and anger and by the lack of reason and pity. In chapter 4, "The Philosopher," Burnley comes back to Gower, this time focusing on two tales that teach patience and stoicism, the tale of "The Patience of Socrates" and the tale of "Diogenes and Alexander." Burnley suggests that in the latter, "the names of the participants are inconsequential" (71), because Gower's main point is to create a conceptual opposition between the philosopher and the tyrant, and between reason and the will. Aside from these extended discussions of Gower's work, Burnley makes a number of other brief references to Gower. He mentions, for instance, that Gower views politics as well as the virtue of prudence as aspects of practical philosophy (45, 54-55); that Gower's term "Folhaste," used in relation to the stories of "Jupiter, Juno, and Tiresias" and "Pyramus and Thisbe," is a rare word in Middle English (47-48); that Gower frequently conflates pity and mercy and describes Christ's incarnation as an example of God's pity that extends beyond justice (139, 143); that Gower's story of the "Donation of Constantine" tackles the issue of the virtuous pagan; and that Gower understands "gentillesse" as a virtue consonant with courtesy and reasonable living (152). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burnley, J. D Published Burnley, J. D. "Chaucer's Language and the Philosophers' Tradition." Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1979 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Cronica Tripertita Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer's Language and the Philosophers' Tradition 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 1979 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Strohm, Paul Published Strohm, Paul. "Form and Social Statement in Confessio Amantis and The Canterbury Tales." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 1 (1979), pp. 17-40. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Biography of Gower Confessio Amantis Review Strohm applies the Marxist concept of "mediation" (popularized by Raymond Williams) to Gower and Chaucer. Mediation is "the process by which a problematic social reality can be reconceived or restated, to appear in a work of art in a new and potentially more tractable guise" (17). The "problematic social reality" in the late fourteenth century is the increasing challenges to various social, political, and religious hierarchies. Strohm gives as examples the 1376 "Good Parliament," the "Merciless Parliament" of 1386-89, and the beginning of Richard II's despotism in 1397. In response to such factionalism, Gower in the CA prologue emphasizes that his poetry aims to overcome disorder and division and will "reconcile competing classes as did Arion" (27). Gower creates unity by showing the connections between love and kingly self-governance and through the teaching of Genius we learn that the "principal characteristic of viciousness in the Confessio is a tendency to thrust oneself into or overturn the rightful order of things – to alter one's station, to supplant others, to disrupt sanctioned relationships" (29). Gower further mediates political factionalism by creating an aesthetic structure which subordinates the individual tales to a larger vision and framework. By contrast, Chaucer's approach in the CT is through "juxtaposition of voices, perspectives, genres" (33). Finally, Strohm relates these aesthetic choices to the authors' biographies. Gower's financial and political independence made him more likely to promote traditional hierarchies. Chaucer was more subject to factionalism and thus saw reality as "comprised of a multiplicity of competing interests" (39). [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 Form and Social Statement in Confessio Amantis and The Canterbury Tales 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's CA borrows from the "Vita Barlaam et Josaphat" in two places. First of all, the Trump of Death story is based on the first of the Vita's ten apologues. Analogues are further found in the Legenda Aurea, the Gesta Romanorum, and in the 16th century Japanese Christian text "Sanctos no gosagveo." Examples of Gower's changes include the greater contrast between the May setting and the age of the pilgrims, the sharp contrast in character between the king and his proud brother, and Gower's final emphasis on "the necessity of humble obedience to the law of nature established by God" (10). Gower's exposition on the gods in Book 6 is also based on the Vita, but Gower expands the section on the Greek deities by using Berchorius' "De formis figurisque deorum" (the first chapter of his Ovidius moralizatus). Comparison of the source texts reveals, for example, that "gentils" (in 5.1271) should be translated as "gentiles" (not "gentle people") and that naming Philyra as mother of Jupiter is not peculiar to Gower. Gower especially follows the Vita in "rejecting Berchorius' allegorical and favorable interpretations of pagan divinities" (15). Ito concludes with some comments on the Japanese text Sanctos no gosagveo." [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ito, Masayoshi Published Ito, Masayoshi. "Gower's Use of 'Vita Barlaam et Josaphat' in Confessio Amantis." Studies in English Literature 56 (1979), pp. 3-18. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Use of 'Vita Barlaam et Josaphat' in Confessio Amantis 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 According to Woolf, Chaucer's apostrophe to Gower as "moral" and Coleridge's reference to the "innate kindliness" of Chaucer's nature have had a distorting effect on modern criticism. Woolf argues that it would be more appropriate if the two descriptions were inverted. While Gower writes some narratives that can be considered "moral," in general Gower is willing "to absent himself from didacticism in the Confessio" (223). At times "this suspension of moral judgment works well, liberating a fresh and illuminating sympathy for his characters; at other times it leaves the story flaccid, the controlling moral pattern of the source being disregarded" (223). To demonstrate this thesis Woolf examines a number of stories that fall under the category of lust and its five subdivisions (i.e., sexual acts against nature, incest, rape, adultery, and fornication). Gower's sympathy is particularly evident in his treatment of homosexuality and incest. Achilles, Iphis, and Canace are all characters whose innocence and lack of conscious moral responsibility are emphasized. The story of "Canace and Machaire," for instance, postpones the death of Canace's baby and subordinates it to the death of Canace herself; she is shown to be the helpless victim of her father Aeolus, whose wrath is the main focus of the exemplum. To win this kind of moral freedom from his sources, one of Gower's strategies is to attach his stories to other deadly sins than the ones they are usually applied to. Gower's tales of rape, for example, are scattered through at least four books other than Book 8 on lust. Sometimes, however, Gower's effort "to penetrate with an unscolding eye into the depths and ramifications of human weakness" (219) leads him to debase some of the key terms of his poem. In the story of "Mundus and Paulina," the sympathy created for Mundus (whose reason is said to be overcome by love) is based on a very narrow understanding of "kinde" as referring merely to sexual instincts. Here Gower follows Vincent of Beauvais, but Woolf suggests that he "would have done better not to repeat him" (229). Similarly, in the tale of the "King and the Steward's Wife," Gower creates a happy ending that shows a serious lack of sensitive moral judgment. By having the king marry the steward's wife he condones a bigamous marriage. Yet another partial failure is the tale of "Iphis and Anaxarathen," related by Ovid as a cynical story used to seduce a woman, but told by Gower as a warning against despondency in love. In Gower, the tale's "moral outlines are extraordinarily fuzzy" and the attempt "to sentimentalise the cynical, to sympathise with characters for whom the plot forbids sympathy, is a failure" (231). Whereas Gower is often uncritically kind, Chaucer is much more moral. Since Chaucer is a poet highly conscious of genres, and of the different moral codes appropriate to them, "he can suspend ordinary moral judgment simply by indicating a classical setting for his tales" (232). When Chaucer tells the story of Lucretia in the LGW he uses an allusion to Augustine to hint that the heroine's suicide is wrong. Likewise, Chaucer's story of Tereus and Progne "adopts the clever strategy of lapsing into a kind of mumbling reluctance to tell it and indeed stops short" (233). By contrast, Gower, unaware of the morally perilous nature of his material weakly completes the story. The rest of Woolf's essay (234-45) provides a close reading of The Merchant's Tale, The Franklin's Tale, and The Wife of Bath's Prologue to illustrate Chaucer's more serious treatment of love and lust. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rosemary, Woolf Published Rosemary, Woolf. "Moral Chaucer and Kindly Gower." In J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam. Ed. Salu, Mary and Farrell, Robert T. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979, pp. 221-245. 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 Moral Chaucer and Kindly Gower Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cornell UP, 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 Book Section PeerReviewed