Gower between Manuscript and Print.
- Author/Editor
- Echard, Siân.
- Title
- Gower between Manuscript and Print.
- Published
- Echard, Siân. "Gower between Manuscript and Print." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 169-88.
- Review
- In his review in JGN 22.1 (2003) of Echard's 2001 essay "Dialogues and Monologues: Manuscript Representations of the Conversation in the Confessio Amantis," Peter Nicholson observed the critic's "long-term study of the effect of MS design and layout upon reading and reception." That long-term study is extended here once again, by Echard's examinations of representations of conversation in William Caxton and Thomas Berthelette's editions as well as those found in various manuscripts, and by her lengthier analysis of how manuscripts and early printed editions of CA represent--or obscure--Gower's "multilingual enterprise" (181), particularly the "unique . . . insistence on the integral role of Latin to his English enterprise" (185) evident in the Latin glosses and commentary of CA. Generally, Echard argues, "features of Gower's oeuvre were often muted, redirected, or lost entirely, when the poet's work encountered the strictures and expectations of early print" (171), attributing these fall-offs to the limited flexibility of early print or to the printer's goals in promoting English. As Echard shows, the bi-lingulism and tri-lingualism of some Gower manuscripts is overt, even emphasized, in a "whole range of ways"--rubrication, placement of glosses, location in compilations, prefaces and colophons, etc.--and "Gower's original audience, immersed in manuscript culture, was primed to navigate these meaningful 'ordinationes'." Limitations in early print technology (single fonts and difficulties in two-color printing, for example) contributed to the "visual-linguistic flattening in Caxton's design" (181), while Berthelette, promoting Gower as an "English" poet, rearranged the opening of CA and, in effect, "diffuses its bilingual claim" (184). The "dialogic design" of CA--the conversational exchange between Amans and Genius--is graphically evident in print layout as well as in the manuscripts, but Caxton's table of contents "serves to frame" the work "as a collection of stories rather than as a dialogue" (186), reshaping its fundamental structure and in doing so muting aspects of Amans' character. Berthelette's table forecasts for the reader "not just . . . a collection of stories" . . . but an . . . encyclopedia," and it "reflects print's more radical reshaping of Gower's end matter" (187), again deemphasizing Gower's multilingualism in favor of English only. Media alter messages, and early print "could not compete with the complexity and beauty of a medieval manuscript page" (188), Echard argues, and she supports her discussion neatly with five reproductions of pages from the manuscripts and books. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2]
- Date
- 2020
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations
Confessio Amantis
Language and Word Studies