Gower and. . . Pilgrimage? 'Pamphilus?' Proverbs? Some Promising Preguntas Raised but Far from Answered at Valladolid

Author/Editor
Bowden, Betsy

Title
Gower and. . . Pilgrimage? 'Pamphilus?' Proverbs? Some Promising Preguntas Raised but Far from Answered at Valladolid

Published
Bowden, Betsy. "Gower and. . . Pilgrimage? 'Pamphilus?' Proverbs? Some Promising Preguntas Raised but Far from Answered at Valladolid." John Gower Newsletter 33.2 (2014), pp. 6-13. ISSN 1051-3493

Review
The Second International Congress of the John Gower Society at Valladolid in 2011 prompts Bowden to suggest two areas for future Gower scholarship. The first concerns the possibility that Gower himself might have made an undocumented trip to Spain before undertaking to write CA. Citing the ease with which Margery Kempe was able to visit Santiago de Compostella (rather later), Bowden also points out how descriptions of sea voyages in CA seem to be more closely based on real experience than that in VC, and she notes that while in Spain, Gower could have come into contact with Juan Ruiz's 'Libro de Buen Amor,' with its suggestive invocation of the Seven Deadly Sins and its use of the story of Nebuchadnezzar (both much more briefly than in Gower). Bowden also suggests that the movement of proverbs across linguistic boundaries during the Middle Ages and Gower's own use of the same proverb in more than one of his languages might provide another fruitful ground for further research. [eJGN 34.1 PN]

Date
2014

Gower Subjects
Biography of Gower