Women and Power.
- Author/Editor
- Lewis, Katherine J.
- Title
- Women and Power.
- Published
- Lewis, Katherine J. "Women and Power." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 323-50.
- Review
- Lewis's essay contributes to ongoing efforts to rewrite women into English literary history, exploring Gower's depictions of women in "Confessio Amantis" and female reception of the poem and related works. "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Vox Clamantis," Lewis tells us, offer "essentially one-dimensional illustrations" of aspects of "patriarchal or misogynistic discourse" (324), while women in CA are often "intelligent, astute and active in their own and others' interests" (327). Lewis aligns several female characters in CA (Petronella, Thais, and various queens, including Medea) with St. Katherine of Alexandria, the popular cult of whom Lewis documented in a book-length study published in 2000. St. Katherine's popularity enables Lewis to aver that female readers of CA "would have spotted the similarities between her virtues and intelligence" (331) and those of Gower's characters. Lewis attends particularly to how Gower's characters may have appealed to women of elite status, particularly Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Elizabeth Woodville, and Margaret Beaufort--women "who played a role in later medieval English politics" (350) and whose literary interests have been well documented through their ownership of or associations with manuscripts of CA and similar texts. In this way, Lewis includes CA in a "wider 'syllabus' of political and courtly instruction owned by high status women" (346) of the fifteenth century. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]
- Date
- 2019
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and LIterary Relations
Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis)
Vox Clamantis
Manuscripts and Textual Studies