John Gower.
- Author/Editor
- Yeager, R. F.
- Title
- John Gower.
- Published
- In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature, ed. Candace Barrington and Sebastian Sobecki. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2019), pp. 148-66.
- Review
- Gower is one of three canonical authors (along with Chaucer and Langland) to receive his own chapter in this introduction to law and literature in medieval England. Yeager contrasts Gower's literary criticisms of the legal estate with his personal interactions with the law. He notes that the famous reference to Gower wearing "rayed sleeves" comes at the end of a section on friars and likely suggests "an ecclesiastical allusion, not a legal one" (149). Yeager further argues that when Chaucer made Gower his attorney in 1378, it may have been because of Gower's frequent buying and selling of property, "not unlike the way an experienced real-estate agent today understands the legal ins and outs of property purchases and sales" (153). Gower's involvement with the law is also seen in his detailed last will: "in 1408, when Gower died, written will were relatively unusual" (150). Nevertheless, Gower's criticism of legal practitioners suggests that he was not a lawyer himself (153). Yeager goes on to demonstrate that Gower's work presents a rich and varied treatment of legal themes. Gower has a broad understanding of the types of law, ranging from natural law and the law of charity to more concrete positive law. He also links the concept of justice with a constellation of similar virtues (equity, love, grace, mercy, pity, etc.). In fact, Gower's theological view of justice (which is separate from the law proper) is deeply Augustinian (155-56). It is also political, as Gower rebukes Richard II in the "Cronica Tripertita" for shaping the law to suit his own needs (156). By contrast, Henry IV is entirely associated with justice: "In the Cronica the most common adjectives describing Henry and each of his initial acts as new monarch are 'iustus' and 'pius'" (156). Despite his support for Henry IV, Gower is not an absolutist or monarchist. Neither is he strictly a parliamentarian or constitutionalist. Gower advocates for good counsel and he recognizes that the king's authority stems from the law, but he also maintains that only the king can "legitimate the law by ensuring its equitable application" (159). [CvD. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.]
- Date
- 2019
- Gower Subjects
- Backgrounds and General Criticism
Biography of Gower
Cronica Tripertita