John Gower: Manuscripts, Readers, Contexts

Description

The essays collected here represent the current state of research into the works of John Gower, poet, philosopher, and contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. They assess Gower’s literary output within the context of manuscript production and readership/ownership in late medieval England and the triangle of Latin, French, and English as literary and official languages in Ricardian England. Sections of the volume focus on manuscripts and the circulation of Gower’s works in languages other than English. In addition, the literary and philosophical contexts that inform Gower’s poetics and politics are considered here, resulting in readings of the poet’s rhetorical and ethical agenda as well as his texts’ intervention in and reaction to social outsiders in his contemporary London. A wide variety of critical discourses inform the readings presented here, including medieval English, French, and Latin literary studies, art history, manuscript production and reception, postmodern ethics, and historical studies. Front matter (“Contents”, “List of Illustrations”, “Preface”), p. i Free Access Introduction, p. 1 Malte Urban https://doi.org/10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.3.1630 John Gower: Reader, Editor, and Geometrician ‘for Engelondes sake’, p. 11 Russell A. Peck https://doi.org/10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.3.1631 Gower’s Confessio Amantis, the Prick of Conscience, and the History of the Latin Gloss in Early English Literature, p. 39 Andrew Galloway https://doi.org/10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.3.1632 Women Readers and Pierpont Morgan MS M. 126, p. 71 Martha Driver https://doi.org/10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.3.1633 Translating Women, Translating Texts: Gower’s ‘Tale of Tereus’ and the Castilian and Portuguese Translations of the Confessio Amantis, p. 109 María Bullón-Fernández https://doi.org/10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.3.1634 Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Natural Morality, and Vernacular Ethics, p. 135 J. Allan Mitchell https://doi.org/10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.3.1635 Rhetorical Gower: Aristotelianism in the Confessio Amantis’s Treatment of ‘Rethorique’, p. 155 Georgiana Donavin https://doi.org/10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.3.1636 Past and Present: Gower’s Use of Old Books in Vox Clamantis, p. 175 Malte Urban https://doi.org/10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.3.1637 ‘The slyeste of alle’: The Lombard Problem in John Gower’s London, p. 197 Craig E. Bertolet https://doi.org/10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.3.1638 Promiscuous Contexts: Gower’s Wife, Prostitution, and the Confessio Amantis, p. 219 Eve Salisbury https://doi.org/10.1484/M.DISPUT-EB.3.1639 Back matter (“List of Contributors”), p. 241