Robert F. Yeager

Robert F.. Yeager

John Gower's Poetic is a new study of Gower's complete poetry. Considered are Vox Clamantis, Mirour de l'Omme, Traitié pour les Amantz marietz, Cinkante Balades, Confessio Amantis, and `To King Henry IV, In Praise ofPeace'. In fiveintegrative chapters, Yeger demonstrates that Gower - far from being the lugubrious moralist and journeyman craftsman as which he is often portrayed -was in fact a writer of broad learning and ambition, whose work was consistently shaped bya poetic theory of profound originality. To demonstrate this, John Gower's Poetic re-examines Gower's work from the basic levels of orthography, grammar, vocabulary, and metrics, to his enduringmacrocosmic themes; in the process, Yeager shows that Gower saw himself as an `auctor', or `poete', in the manner of Dante, Machaut, Froissart, and Deschamps. The book concludes with an extensive, fresh reading of Gower's greatestpoem, the Confessio Amantis. Professor R. F. Yeager teaches in the Department of English and Foreign Languages, University of West Florida, Pensacola.

The Search for a New Arion

John Gower's Poetic

Russell A. Peck

New essays on aspects of Gower's poetry, viewed through the lens of the self and beyond.

Others and the Self

John Gower

John Hines

Elisabeth M. Dutton

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 available in 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

Language, Translation, and Tradition

John Gower, Trilingual Poet

"Gower's achievement in writing substantially in all three primary languages of his time --Anglo-French, English, and Latin--was a source of pride to others and, undoubtedly, to him too: into the final years of his life he continued to produce poetry in all three languages. In Praise of Peace [is] in the same position as the shorter Latin works edited and translated in this volume: ignored, neglected, reduced, or relegated to the dusty realm of footnotes."--Publisher's website.

Robert F. Yeager

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