The Unfinished Hope of Gower's Transgender Children.
- Author/Editor
- Bychowksi, Gabrielle M. W.
- Title
- The Unfinished Hope of Gower's Transgender Children.
- Published
- Bychowksi, Gabrielle M. W. "The Unfinished Hope of Gower's Transgender Children." Accessus 7, no. 1 (2022): n.p.
- Review
- Bychowski opens with a call for hope and healing in the present with the alarming number of anti-transgender laws that had been proposed in the early months of 2021 in the United States. She then details the potential experiences and struggles that face transgender children, asking how we can offer them prayers to uplift them. Bychowski explains how such questions have brought her back to John Gower, particularly the Confessio Amantis, in which she sees " the imagined lives (and deaths) of transgender children, Iphis and Narcissus." Referring to her other work on transgender lives in Gower, Bychowski discusses the dysphoria of hope. She asserts, "If the 'Confessio Amantis' is a confession of love, I argue, one might see it also as a speaking-together prompted by parental love, a discourse between vertical and horizontal identities, like and unlike, generation and generation, the contingently known and the yet unknown." But then she adds the dimension of "queerly slanted love" that crosses identifications and temporalities, which she seems to use as her entrance into the close readings that follow. Reading these stories, Bychowski seizes the opportunity to advocate for trans affirming laws and healthcare. She explains how Gower is "a poet-parent of transgender children" by including them in the narratives that make up the CA. He uses these characters' identities as they existed in the past of his sources, but Gower, too, modifies them to fit his own age. This brings Bychowski to speculate about what experiences Gower might have had with transgender folx and to reference Bruce Holsinger's "A Burnable Book" that includes the transgender woman, Eleanor Rykener. Bychowski then examines the different conclusions that Gower brings to his two trans children: Iphis and Narcissus. She explains how the situations differ for the trans feminine character (Narcissus) versus the trans masculine character (Iphis), noting that both are affected by patriarchal sexism. Bychowski concludes that Gower, through these characters in his tales, offers us a mirror to reflect on and to question our laws, healthcare, and society. She then ends with this beautiful line that drives home the importance of such work in our field (and others): "Again, we may find the spirit of our beloveds blossoming in yet unborn generations, in unpredictable queer times and queer worlds, in unimaginable likeness and strangeness, in work and promises unfinished." [JGS. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.]
- Date
- 2022
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis