A Brief History of the John Gower Society.
- Author/Editor
- Yeager, R. F.
- Title
- A Brief History of the John Gower Society.
- Published
- Yeager, R. F. "A Brief History of the John Gower Society." New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession 4, no. 1 (2023): 57-67. Open access at https://escholarship.org/uc/ncs_pedagogyandprofession/. ISSN: 2766-1768.
- Review
- With characteristic depth of detail and good humor, Yeager offers a chronological description of the formulation and development of the John Gower Society (JGS), tracing its origins to a conversation in 1980 and identifying--almost year by year--how and when its phases and projects were planned and realized, leading up to the Society's fifth International Congress, scheduled for 2022 (although delayed by COVID until 2023, after this essay was written). Seemingly based on the minutes of the JGS meetings and the programs of its conferences--as well as Yeager's own capacious memory--the essay makes clear the Society's history, mentioning individual scholars (a list too long to include here) and affiliated organizations (again, too many to list) through whom and by which the Society has blossomed. Dues rates, membership numbers, lists of publications, accounts of individual meetings, launchings of newsletters, bibliographies, and websites may sound dry, but here they are definitely not. Leavened and spiced with Pete Beidler's comic poem about how to pronounce "Gower," prospective plans (later dropped) for a JGS T-shirt, the "insurmountable bureaucratic twaddling of the MLA" (61), exciting future prospects, and much more, this history of the JGS comes to life, lacking only, perhaps, a clear account of Yeager's own foundational, central, and ongoing contributions. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1]
- Date
- 2023
- Gower Subjects
- Bibliographies, Reports, and Reference