This volume contains twenty five essays based on papers presented at the conference 1408-2008: The Age of Gower, which was held at Queen Mary University of London in July 2008 to explore John Gower's significance on the 600th anniversary of his death. Making available new work by well-known scholars as well as fresh contributions by younger scholars, the collection yields abundant proof, if proof were needed, of the ongoing vitality of Gower studies.
In the opening sentence of her introduction to the volume, Elisabeth Dutton observes that Gower was "the author of major works in French, Latin and English" and that he was "highly respected, on a level with Chaucer, in the centuries following his death." These two ideas-- Gower's trilingualism and Gower's poetic importance--inform the volume's overall conception and structure. The collection promiscuously mingles essays on Gower's Confessio Amantis with essays wholly or partly on Gower's other works, and thus fulfils its stated goal of "avoid[ing] the ghettoization of Gower's French and Latin works" (1). It is worth noting, however, that of the nine contributors who give substantial attention to works other than the Confessio and In Praise of Peace, only four take a non-English work as their specific focus: David R. Carlson (Cronica Tripertita), Matthew Irvin (Vox Clamantis), Holly Barbaccia (Cinkante Balades), and Cathy Hume (Traitié). Candace Barrington also contributes an essay on In Praise of Peace; R.F. Yeager a summary essay, reprising earlier work, on the contexts of Gower's Mirour, Cinkante Ballades, and Traitié; and Martha Driver on Gower's afterlife in iterations of Shakespeare's Pericles. On the whole, contributors are most interested in aspects of Gower's poetic achievement--emphasis falls on the second term in "Trilingual Poet"--and Gower's Confessio, the sole focus of eleven essays, continues to define the main course of Gower criticism, though it hardly dominates in a tyrannical fashion.
Far less numerous than critical essays on Gower's poetry are studies of the manuscript contexts of Gower's works. One of most substantial of these (see also Tamara F. O'Callaghan's essay, discussed below) stands alone as the volume's first section, "Gower at Source." In "Southwark Gower: Augustinian Agencies in Gower's Manuscripts and Texts--Some Prolegomena," Jean-Pascal Pouzet begins by recalling the known facts of Gower's association with the Augustinian priory of St. Mary Overy in Southwark and proceeds to gather codicological evidence for the importance of Gower's Augustinian affinities to the composition and dissemination of his works. The argument follows two threads: Gower's works are shown to have intriguing similarities to material of known Augustinian provenance; Gower's works seem to have often circulated within circles of Augustinian influence. In each case, Pouzet's conclusions are duly cautious, but highly suggestive, especially when he compares Gower's work to annotations found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 1285, a "patristic florilegium" known to have been held at St. Mary's during Gower's residence there (15).
Ranging in length from two to seven essays, the remaining sections tend toward eclecticism; one is capaciously entitled "Science, Law and Economy." Nevertheless, movement from essay to essay is always logical and fruitful juxtapositions abound.
Since space does not permit consideration of each essay individually, and since summaries of each essay will soon be available on the Gower Bibliography Online, [1] in what follows I touch on several of the themes that emerge, especially as they relate to the volume's central preoccupation with Gower's status as poet. Among several liberties that inevitably follow from such an approach, I frequently deviate from the order of the essays in the volume.
First, the two essays of the section "Gower Looking East" confirm the thematic importance of hybridity and loss to Gower's poetic art, even as they illuminate Gower's geographical poetics. In "The Place of Egypt in Gower's Confessio Amantis," Ethan Knapp focuses his argument that "Egypt appeared to Gower as a historical problem in that it was both utterly alien and yet utterly intrinsic to the crucial theological and political inheritances of the classical Mediterranean world" (27) on Gower's history of religions in Book V and Gower's use of the Nectanabus story in Book VI. The essay is stimulating and explores uncommonly rich ground. However, given the importance of the biblical Moses to the Book V excursus and to all of Knapp's main interests--Egypt, magic, hybridity, law, received knowledge--it is perhaps surprising that the essay does not consider this key figure (eight separate appearances in the Confessio; many more in the Mirour and Vox) as a necessary counterpart to Nectanabus. In "Topical and Tropological Gower: Invoking Armenia in the Confessio Amantis," Carolyn P. Collette draws on Middle English romance and other crusade and travel writing to explicate the "shared cultural matrix" (45) behind the Armenian tales that form a series in Book IV, beginning with "Rosiphelee." As in romance and historiographic tradition, so in Gower, Armenia serves as "an example of loss and decline [and] represents a cautionary tale for Western Europe of the failure of arms and profit" (42).
Related to issues of hybridity and loss, a second theme concerns the role of the scientific excursus in Gowerian poetics. The only essay containing illustrations, Tamara F. O'Callaghan's "The Fifteen Stars, Stones and Herbs: Book VII of the Confessio Amantis and its Afterlife" traces more fully than hitherto the Hermetical tradition behind Gower's somewhat anomalistic discussion of the fifteen stars, stones, and herbs in Confessio VII.1271 ff., and, building on the work of Kate Harris, investigates what attractions such material held for medieval readers. O'Callaghan demonstrates the importance of natural magical lore for Gower and his early readers as witnessed especially by the Pierpont Morgan Confessio, and she suggests that "the poem was read by some as a reference work." She also suggests that "[e]ach time we see stars in an illumination" in the star-studded illustration campaign of Pierpont Morgan MS M.126, "we are subtly reminded that the heavens rule the actions of those on earth" (155). If O'Callaghan's reading of Gower's magical lore keeps in play two functions--the scientific and the poetic--poetic concerns strongly prevail in the discussions of the alchemical doctrines of Confessio IV in the next two essays. In "'Of the parfite medicine': Merita Perpetuata in Gower's Vernacular Alchemy," Stephanie L. Batkie appeals to the existence (which Gower does not explicitly acknowledge) of an "esoteric" alchemy foregrounding the "purification of the soul" alongside the "exoteric" alchemy preoccupied with the purification of the elements (162), Batkie brings Gower's account of alchemy into productive dialogue with "Adrian and Bardus" (Confessio V) and "Diogenes and Aristippus" (Confessio VII) and finds in all three passages a commendation of "virtuous textual labour" (167). The importance of Gower's vernacularization of alchemy is that it "open[s] a space for readers to begin to make their own meaning." In this respect it is like the Confessio itself, which "engages readers through absence" (166). Whereas for Batkie alchemy represents the textual labors of the individual reader, Karla Taylor, in "Inside Out in Gower's Republic of Letters," takes alchemy as a metaphor of the political change so central to the project of Gower's Confessio. Taylor demonstrates a "remarkable faith in appearances" in Gower's alchemy, describing it as "the science of reliable reference" (174). Taylor turns to "Lucrece" (Confessio VII), reading the tale in terms of the need for correspondence of thought and word, and likening the revolution led by Brutus to the transformations of alchemy.
Gower's habit of subordinating didactic excursus to poetic ends has often been interpreted in connection with Gower's interest in exploring the limits of knowledge. Related to the larger question of the role of "lore" in poetic "lust," the productively dissonant pair of essays by Matthew Irvin and Peter Nicholson address Gowerian hermeneutics. Irvin's "Genius and Sensual Reading in the Vox Clamantis" makes a valuable contribution to the literature on Genius, focusing on Genius's role in Vox IV. Irvin finds a heightened use of wordplay in Gower's account of the sexual abuses of nuns, and deems the resultant slippage in meaning illustrative of "the confusion that results from the lack of a prudential guide" to reading (204). Contrariwise, Nicholson's "Irony v. Paradox in the Confessio Amantis" questions the common practice of imposing on the Confessio ironic modes that, while natural for Chaucer, are incongruous for Gower. Instead of irony, Nicholson shows how paradoxes clustered around "love" are "written into every level of Genius's instruction" (215). Nicholson's conclusion is weighty and significant: "Things are what they seem in the Confessio Amantis, but they are far from simple, and taking the poem at its word does not simplify it; it restores its complexity" (215). While Irvin interprets the absence of a worthy guide in Vox IV as a call for readerly discernment, Nicholson's essay suggests that a wholly satisfactory guide is virtually unimaginable in the sublunary, Genial vision of the Confessio.
Nicholson's discussion of irony and paradox also contributes to another recurrent theme in Gower criticism, and in this volume: the relationship of Gower's poetic art to Chaucer's. The essays here avoid reductive extremes, attending to the differences between the two poets without exaggerating them, and a relationship of mutual respect emerges. In "Gower's Business: Artistic Production of Cultural Capital and The Tale of Florent," Brian Gastle traces in the Confessio "a mercantile undercurrent...influencing and defining Gower's industry" and traces the impact of this work on Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale. Gower refers to his poetic work as "business" and inscribes it at the "poetic centre" of commercial London (183). Gastle suggests that The Wife of Bath's Tale "becomes a literal transmission of the cultural capital that [Gower's "Florent"]...represents" (195). Chaucer also figures in "Romance, Popular Style and the Confessio Amantis," in which George Shuffelton proposes that we think "in formal terms" about Gower's use of romance and other popular genres. Shuffelton finds Gower adopting the idioms of popular romance snubbed by Chaucer, and on the whole there is a "remarkable lack of conflict at the 'surface' of the text, where different genres and styles interact without a hint of tension or even explicit acknowledgement that such differences exist" (81). Unlike both Chaucer and Langland, "Gower seems remarkable for his desire to evade...conflicts [of genre and register] rather than exploit them" (83). Though less directly concerned with Chaucer, Richard F. Green's study of folk contexts of "Florent" in "Florent's Mariage sous la potence" makes an intriguing counterpart to Shuffelton's extremely stimulating essay. In "Rival Poets: Gower's Confessio and Chaucer's Legend of Good Women," John M. Bowers revisits John Fisher's hypothesis of a sustained "creative interplay" between Chaucer and Gower (279). Bowers argues in favor of a late date for Chaucer's beginning the Legend of Good Women (between 1392 and 1394) and interprets the work in relation to Gower's Confessio and to the two poets' respective positions at court. Gower emerges as "the London author of English, Latin and French poetry during the 1390s" (287).
Several essays investigate specific questions of Gower's poetic technique that cannot be discussed here: his relation to the exegetical literal (Robert R. Edwards), architectural dexterity in the Confessio (J.A. Burrows), handling of female voicing (Holly Barbaccia), handling of voicing and rime riche (Kim Zarins), positioning relative to the dream vision tradition (Andrew Galloway), invention and versification (David R. Carlson). Gower has clearly earned a place as a preeminent medieval poet.
The first of two plenary lectures at the 2008 congress (the second being J.A. Burrow's "Sinning against Love in Confessio Amantis," mentioned above) deserves special notice. In "John Gower: Prophet or Turncoat?," Nigel Saul sounds a note of caution in response to some recent interpretations of Gower's relationship to the Lancastrian revolution. Saul argues (pace Terry Jones and others) that Gower's well known revisions of his works could not have occurred in the period immediately following Henry's usurpation and instead "were made over a longer period in response to a variety of factors" (90). Judicious yet sympathetic, Saul's reading of Gower deserves attention for the formidable historical support it offers old-style readings (akin to those of George Coffman, John Fisher, and Russell Peck) of Gower as thoughtful, engaged citizen, whose works advance a "body of ideas...more consistent and more coherent than some recent critics have allowed" (91). Accordingly, several essays appear as exemplary new approaches to Gower's work as publicist, including Elliot Kendall's "Saving History: Gower's Apocalyptic and the New Arion," Candace Barrington's "John Gower's Legal Advocacy and 'In Praise of Peace,'" and Andreea Boboc's "Se-duction and Sovereign Power in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Saul's essay might also suggest the need to qualify Catherine Hume's characterization, in her essay "Why did Gower Write the Traitié?," of the apparatus dedicating the Traitié "a tout le monde en general" as a "smokescreen" (275). If the Traitié was first intended for a specific adulterer, as she cogently argues, this need not preclude Gower's later (or even simultaneous) reapplication of it to the common good. By the same token, Hume's essay refutes any notion that Gower's political doctrine constitutes a static entity.
If errors must be noted, these include "enemi" for Latin "enim" (128), several references to Phrixus/Frixus (Confessio V) as "Prixus" (127, 135), and "3000" for "30,000" (229). In addition, it must be untrue that Gower's collected works in three languages "run to about 30,000 lines" (304) since the Confessio alone greatly exceeds this number.
There is no doubt about the value of this collection. These essays represent the current flourishing state of Gower studies.
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Notes:
1. See http://gowerbib.lib.utsa.edu/