Introduction: Why Teach Gower's Works?
- Author/Editor
- McShane, Kara L.
Gastle, Brian W.
- Title
- Introduction: Why Teach Gower's Works?
- Published
- McShane, Kara L. and Brian W. Gastle. "Introduction: Why Teach Gower's Works?" Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 30.1 (2023): 7-16.
- Review
- In this essay McShane and Gastle--guest editors of this issue of SMART dedicated to teaching Gower's works--contextualize Gower pedagogy, describe useful Gowerian resources available online and in popular anthologies, and provide summary introductions to the four essays that the issue includes. The editors touch on recent trends in pedagogy ("topics such as gender, identity, and class"), comment on Gower's reception and on relations with Chaucer and other contemporaries, and clarify why Gower is "not taught more widely today," arguing that he should be, because "Gower's works offer a surprising amount of material to address . . . marginalized topics" (7-8), and because his multilingualism is appropriate in our current global politics and particularly useful in helping students to "deal with . . . the practices of medieval reading--which counts upon a dialogue between the text and marginal commentary" (9). This essay, and the four it introduces, address undergraduate study only and the "Confessio Amantis" almost exclusively, but McShane and Gastle make their case for presenting "new perspectives and possibilities for teaching Gower's works" (13). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 2023
- Gower Subjects
- Backgrounds and General Criticism