John Gower and Southwark: The Paradox of the Social Self.
- Author/Editor
- Allen, Rosamund S.
- Title
- John Gower and Southwark: The Paradox of the Social Self.
- Published
- In London and Europe in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Julia Boffey and Pamela M. King (London: Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, 1995), pp. 111-47. ISBN 978-1-870059-07-7.
- Review
- Allen characterizes late-medieval Southwark as a noisy, bustling suburb, separate from but affected by many of the social and political restraints and opportunities of the City of London. She credits Martha Carlin's 1983 University of Toronto dissertation for many of her details and emphases, and offers her own interpretive perspective that seeks to align Gower's outlooks with the environs in which he lived for "most of his adult life" (111): "Gower's situation, near but not in the City, and among some of the most wealthy and powerful of the land, seems to have consolidated his moral and political interests" (114). Even though "Gower lived in and for the world of books and wrote with extreme veneration for the past and its writers which screens out direct record," we can nevertheless, Allen tells us, "trace something of Gower's Southwark in his . . . allegories and moral narratives" (115). Enticing as it is, this goal is accomplished in only a very general way. Allen describes noteworthy features of Southwark, identifies Gower's likely affiliations with personages of the area, describes a number of events in Gower's life and times, and offers an engaging survey of his major works, focusing on narrative devices and intended audiences. Mention of Southwark in this survey of the poetry is infrequent, however, so that links between Southwark and Gower's works are neither specific nor clear. As commentary rather than biography or analysis, the essay is well worth reading for its details, perspectives, and energetic prose, but its potential is unfulfilled, perhaps necessarily so. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.]
- Date
- 1995
- Gower Subjects
- Biography of Gower
Backgrounds and General Criticism