English Writers: An Attempt Towards a History of English Literature.
- Author/Editor
- Morley, Henry.
- Title
- English Writers: An Attempt Towards a History of English Literature.
- Published
- Morley, Henry, ed. English Writers: An Attempt Towards a History of English Literature. London: Cassell, 1889. Vol. IV: 150-240.
- Review
- Morley's biographical sketch of Gower (pp. 150-60) surveys and offers corrections to previous accounts, with description of Gower's tomb and its inscriptions, followed by a description of the Trentham MS, including a history of the balade form and a printing of CB 2, with a translation (pp. 165-66). A second chapter follows concerning VC, with a description of the Revolt of 1381, narrative summaries of VC and CrT, and commentary on the "spirit" of VC as helping to justify Chaucer's label of "moral" Gower (200). A third chapter follows on CA, characterizing the poem as "earnest as it could be made by a writer hampered with the working of a fashionable piece of intellectual machinery for which, writing also when aged and in ill health, he did not really care" (201). An extensive summary/description of CA follows, book by book, interspersed with—and closed by—commentary on textual revisions, sources, analogues, and the "musical" qualities of Gower's English verse and diction. [RFY1981; rev. MA]
- Date
- 1889
- Gower Subjects
- Biography of Gower
Cinkante Balades
Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations
Vox Clamantis
Cronica Tripertita
Confessio Amantis
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
Language and Word Studies