Gower's Latin Manuscripts.

Author/Editor
Batkie, Stephanie L.

Title
Gower's Latin Manuscripts.

Published
Batkie, Stephanie L. "Gower's Latin Manuscripts." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 102-09.

Review
The Latin works--VC, CrT, and short poems--all survive in fairly numerous witnesses. Reviewing the manuscript catalogues, Batkie notes the evidence for a scriptorium overseen by Gower, as well as authorial revisions as late as the Henry Percy rebellion of 1402-05 (103-04). Under "Manuscript production and conditions," she notes the probability of "redactions" showing the poet's increasing disillusionment with Richard II, as well as a network of scribes if not a scriptorium (105-06). Moving on to discuss "how those [material] conditions generate new readings of the texts themselves" (106), she notes, for example, how the famous trilingual MS BL Add. 59495 may really express an evolving critique of Henry IV's bellicosity (107). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.]

Date
2017

Gower Subjects
Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Vox Clamantis
Cronica Tripertita
Minor Latin Poetry