Off the Grid for Forty Years: Bringing John Gower into the Classroom.

Author/Editor
Yeager, R.F

Title
Off the Grid for Forty Years: Bringing John Gower into the Classroom.

Published
Yeager, R.F. "Off the Grid for Forty Years: Bringing John Gower into the Classroom." Pedagogy 13 (2013), pp. 357-70. ISSN 1531-4200

Review
Yeager's essay is about everything that has happened since he and others have labored to get Gower "onto the grid," and he offers the story as a model for others who seek canonical and classroom status for less well-known writers and who, to switch the metaphor, pursue that particular Holy Grail of inclusion in the "Norton Anthology." The events that Yeager recounts here will be familiar to those of us who have been following Gower studies over the years: the publication of the bibliographies, translations, and concordances; the famous MLA session in 1981 that led to the formation of the John Gower Society (and to the creation of the journal in which this review appears); the sessions at Kalamazoo; the institution of the Publications of the John Gower Society through D.S. Brewer; and the new resources that have been made possible by the advent of the Internet. For more recent converts to the cause, this essay will serve as a lesson on the shoulders on which they stand; and while one cannot help being reminded of how central Yeager himself has been to the entire effort, his story is also one of collaboration and of the many hands that have contributed to the seriousness and energy that characterize Gower studies today. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.2]

Date
2013

Gower Subjects
Backgrounds and General Criticism