Gower's Life.
- Author/Editor
- Carlin, Martha.
- Title
- Gower's Life.
- Published
- Carlin, Martha. "Gower's Life." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 22-120.
- Review
- Carlin's discursive biography of Gower follows her list of life records which document the poet's legal and economic activities, enabling her to deduce his income as it varied over his lifetime, locate his residences and when he might have lived in them, and describe in "brief profiles" (pp. 62-79) his various associates and friends. She also explores at some length what can be deduced from Gower's tomb, his marriage to Agnes Groundolf, and his final "Testament." Notably, Carlin disagrees with previous biographers who consider Gower's marriage to be one of chaste convenience--old-age care, if you will--arguing that Gower's poem "Est Amor," his "Testament," Agnes's surname, and archival records of her activities after Gower's death indicate something more personal. Carlin also corrects discussions of Gower's tomb, describing accounts and errors of its reconstruction and placement in Southwark Cathedral (then St, Mary Ovary) and correcting earlier descriptions of his effigy. At the heart of Carlin's discussion, however, are the records themselves; she notes recurrently what they can tell us and what they cannot, punctuating her discussion with "perhaps," "probably," and "may be." Gower, she deduces generally, was a money lender as well as an investor in property, uninvolved as an agent for others, while he enlisted them in his own activities. The "archival record," she concludes, is "curiously lacking in evidence of conventional obligations and service, personal friendships [Chaucer excepted], family relationships [Agnes excepted], collegial ties, and confraternal or parochial affiliations" (109). A closing Appendix includes Carlin's transcriptions of two Latin Hustings deeds of 1366, and English translations of the lawsuit "Feriby v. Gower et al" (Guildford, 1394), and Gower's final "Testament." [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]
- Date
- 2019
- Gower Subjects
- Biography of Gower