Towns and Trade.
- Author/Editor
- Davis, James.
- Title
- Towns and Trade.
- Published
- Davis, James. "Towns and Trade." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 191-212.
- Review
- Davis focuses on the "post-Black Death commercial environment" (192) of the 1370s in England, summarizing the impact of the plague, the concerns of the Good Parliament of 1376, and the "role of John Northampton, who emerged as the standard bearer of civic complaints in the 1370s" (193), exploring how "some 400 lines" of Gower's "Mirour de l'Omme" offered "a conservative, popular programme for market reform, one in which conventional paradigms were weaved together with some of the pressing issues of his day" (193), particularly "issues of prices, quality, coin and the common good" (198). Gower's "specific iteration of sweet wines," for example (MO 26089–100), engages concerns that underlie the impeachment of three London merchants in the Good Parliament, Davis tells us, and his reference to the twenty-four "soldoiers" ("hirelings" of Fraud; MO 25957–68) connects with the Council of Aldermen, "a body of twenty-four individuals who were facing immense criticism at the time Gower was writing" (205–6). Elsewhere, Davis's claims tend to be general rather than specific, as when he observes that Northampton's "appeal to morality cut across sectional divides just as Gower's had" (208) or when he links the growing trend in London for harsh, public punishment of commercial deception to Gower's "strident language about punishment" (211) of dishonest bakers (MO 26173–96). Nonetheless, Davis marshals a range of details and perspectives that establish a "context for Gower's discussion of trade" (211). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]
- Date
- 2019
- Gower Subjects
- Backgrounds and General Criticism
Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis)