John Gower: Manuscripts, Readers, Contexts (review)

The nine studies included in this eclectic collection are presented in three sections. Part I, ‘Manuscripts, Material, and Translation’, includes essays by Russell A. Peck on the mise en scène of the act of reading in Confessio Amantis, Andrew Galloway on the uniqueness of the Latin glosses to the same text, Martha Driver on the role of female patronage in the production of the carefully illustrated Pierpont Morgan MS M. 126, and María Bullón-Fernández on the parallel English, Portuguese, and Castilian versions of Gower’s ‘Tale of Tereus’.

Part II, ‘Rhetoric and Authority’, comprises essays by J. Allan Mitchell on Gower’s role in the authorization of a new vernacular ethics, Georgiana Donavin on Genius’s definition of ‘rhetorique’ in Book VII of the Confessio, and Malte Urban on the poet’s theory of history as this is borne out in his strategies of citation in Vox Clamantis.

Part III, ‘London Life and Texts’, closes the volume with essays by Craig E. Bertolet on the historical circumstances which inform Gower’s anti-Lombard vitriol in the Mirour de l’Omme and the Confessio and Eve Salisbury on the dossier of texts pertaining to the identity of the poet’s often overlooked wife, Agnes Groundolf.

That the collection lacks an obvious thematic or methodological unity appears to have been part of Malte Urban’s plan. In his Introduction, Urban writes that these essays ‘approach the works of John Gower from a variety of angles that are to a large degree informed by the multiplicity of discourses contained in Gower’s texts’ (p. 1). Nevertheless, it seems likely that the most enduringly useful of these studies will be those which focus most closely on the volume’s titular concerns: Galloway provides an important starting point for anyone interested in composing the, as yet unwritten, history of the gloss; Driver’s text will be of crucial importance to future studies of Gower’s female readership and the history of women’s involvement in the late medieval book trade; Bullón-Fernández undertakes important groundwork on the activities of Gower’s Iberian translators; and Bertolet’s contextualization of the poet’s anti-Lombard sentiment contains much which will be of use to medievalists with an interest in Anglo-Italian relations.

This said, Urban is to be congratulated for bringing together nine highquality essays. They should be essential reading for all scholars with an interest in the current state of Gower studies.