New essays on aspects of Gower's poetry, viewed through the lens of the self and beyond. The topics of "selfhood" and "otherness" lie at the heart of these new assessments of John Gower's poetry. The first part of the book, on knowing the self and others, focuses on cognition, brain functions, imagination, and the internal and external factors that affect one's sense of being, from sensation and inner emotive effects within body parts to cosmic perspectives, morality, and theology as voiced by language and storytelling. The second, on the essence of strangers, explores the interconnections of sensation and aesthetics; it also considers kinds of social dysfunction, whether through racial or gender conflict, or religious and political warfare.The final part of the booklooks at social ethics and ethical poets, reassessing two of Gower's perpetual concerns: honest government and honest craft. It considers Gower as a constitutional thinker, whether in terms of law, judicial corruption, or a society of businessmen who would rewrite ethics in terms of business models. It concludes with an examination of the Confessio in the culture of Portugal and Spain. Russell Peck is the John Hall Deane Professor of English at the University of Rochester: R. F. Yeager is Professor of English at the University of West Florida. Contributors: Stephanie L. Batkie, Helen Cooper, Brian W. Gastle, Matthew Giancarlo, Matthew W. Irvin, Yoshiko Kobayashi, Robert J. Meindl, Peter Nicholson, Maura Nolan, Gabrielle Parkin, Russell A. Peck, Ana Saez-Hidalgo, Larry Scanlon, Karla Taylor, Kim Zarins, R.F. Yeager,

The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower reviews the most current scholarship on the late medieval poet and opens doors purposefully to research areas of the future. It is divided into three parts. The first part, "Working theories: medieval and modern," is devoted to the main theoretical aspects that frame Gower's work, ranging from his use of medieval law, rhetoric, theology, and religious attitudes, to approaches incorporating gender and queer studies. The second part, "Things and places: material cultures," examines the cultural locations of the author, not only from geographical and political perspectives, or in scientific and economic context, but also in the transmission of his poetry through the materiality of the text and its reception. "Polyvocality: text and language," the third part, focuses on Gower's trilingualism, his approach to history, and narratological and intertextual aspects of his works. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower is an essential resource for scholars and students of Gower and of Middle English literature, history, and culture generally.

The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower reviews the most current scholarship on the late medieval poet and opens doors purposefully to research areas of the future. It is divided into three parts. The first part, "Working theories: medieval and modern," is devoted to the main theoretical aspects that frame Gower's work, ranging from his use of medieval law, rhetoric, theology, and religious attitudes, to approaches incorporating gender and queer studies. The second part, "Things and places: material cultures," examines the cultural locations of the author, not only from geographical and political perspectives, or in scientific and economic context, but also in the transmission of his poetry through the materiality of the text and its reception. "Polyvocality: text and language," the third part, focuses on Gower's trilingualism, his approach to history, and narratological and intertextual aspects of his works. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower is an essential resource for scholars and students of Gower and of Middle English literature, history, and culture generally.

Essays considering the relationship between Gower's texts and the physical ways in which they were first manifested. The media in which Gower's works were first transmitted, whether in print of manuscript form, are of vital importance to an understanding of both the poet and his audience. However, in comparison with those of his contemporary Chaucer, they have been relatively little studied. This volume represents a major collaboration between specialist scholars in manuscript and book history, and experts in Gower more generally, breaking new ground in approaching Gower through first-hand study of his publications in manuscript and print. Its chapters consider such matters as manuscript and book illumination, provenance, variant texts and editions, scribes, and printers, looking at how, and to what degree, the materiality of the vellum, paper, ink and binding illuminates - and even implicates - the poet and his poetry. MARTHA DRIVER is Distinguished Professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at Pace University; the late DEREK PEARSALL was Gurney Professor of English Literature, Emeritus, Harvard University; R.F. YEAGER Is Professor of English and Foreign Languages, Emeritus, University of West Florida. Contributors: Stephanie L. Batkie, Julia Boffey, Margaret Connolly, Sian Echard, A.S.G. Edwards, Robert Epstein, Brian W. Gastle, Amanda J. Gerber, Yoshiko Kobayashi, Aditi Nafde, Tamara Perez-Fernandez, Wendy Scase, Karla Taylor, David Watt.

New essays demonstrate Gower's mastery of the three languages of medieval England, and provide a thorough exploration of the voices he used and the discourses in which he participated. John Gower wrote in three languages - Latin, French, and English - and their considerable and sometimes competing significance in fourteenth-century England underlies his trilingualism. The essays collected in this volume start from Gower as trilingual poet, exploring Gower's negotiations between them - his adaptation of French sources into his Latin poetry, for example - as well as the work of medieval translators who made Gower's French poetry availablein English. "Translation" is also considered more broadly, as a "carrying over" (its etymological sense) between genres, registers, and contexts, with essays exploring Gower's acts of translation between the idioms of varied literary and non-literary forms; and further essays investigate Gower's writings from literary, historical, linguistic, and codicological perspectives. Overall, the volume bears witness to Gower's merit and his importance to English literary history, and increases our understanding of French and Latin literature composed in England; it also makes it possible to understand and to appreciate fully the shape and significance of Gower's literary achievement and influence, which have sometimes suffered in comparison to Chaucer. ELISABETH DUTTON is Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. Contributors: Elisabeth Dutton, Jean Pascal Pouzet, Ethan Knapp, Carolyn P. Collette,Elliot Kendall, Robert R. Edwards, George Shuffleton, Nigel Saul, David Carlson, Candace Barrington, Andreea Boboc, Tamara F. O'Callaghan, Stephanie Batkie, Karla Taylor, Brian Gastle, Matthew Irvin, Peter Nicholson, J.A. Burrow,Holly Barbaccia, Kim Zarins, Richard F. Green, Cathy Hume, John Bowers, Andrew Galloway, R.F. Yeager, Martha Driver

New perspectives on one of the most important medieval poets. The essays in this volume pay tribute to the distinguished career of Professor R.F. Yeager. Appropriately for one who has done so much to advance scholarship and critical debate on this poet, they focus on John Gower. The approaches taken range widely, from poetics to palaeography, from close critical interpretation to ecocriticism, offering important new readings of Gower and his age. Particular topics addressed include Gower's revisions to the Tale ofRosiphilee; theological and philosophical positions within Gower's work; the violence of manuscript images of Confessio Amantis; and the views of a fellow poet on Gower - Edward Thomas.

The essays in this volume consider the ways in which material and intellectual culture both shaped and were shaped by the literature of late medieval England. The first section, "Textual Material," reflects on cultural and social issues generally referred to as the History of Ideas, and how those ideas manifest in later medieval English texts. Essays address, for example, affect in The Book of Margery Kempe, rhetoric in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, anarchy in late medieval political texts, and temporality in Gower's Confessio Amantis. The essays in the second section, "Material Texts," examine physical objects - from pilgrim badges, to manuscripts, to money, to early printed editions - and the cultural behaviors associated with them, interpreting these objects and exploring their connections to the important literary and political texts of the age such as Piers Plowman, Lydgate's Troy Book, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. All of the essays in this collection emerge from the relationships and connections between the issues that characterize Jim Dean's work: the cultural, material, and aesthetic aspects of later medieval English literature. So too do they reflect a movement in medieval literary studies presaged by Dean's career of scholarship and teaching, that critical approaches to literary texts are best undertaken with an understanding of the complex cultural and historical milieu that defines both the production of those texts and the production of our own work on those texts.