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  • A Companion to Gower
  • Matthew McCabe (bio)
Siân Echard, editor. A Companion to Gower. D.S. Brewer. x, 286. US $34.95

Landowner and man of law, political philosopher and moralist, polymath and classic, poet and London clubman, John Gower (c. 1330– 1408) left a body of writings that more than justifies the large and steadily increasing volume of scholarly activity produced on him during the last quarter century. If his contemporary and associate Geoffrey Chaucer hath not only a blog (infamously) but an entire industry of scholarly and unscholarly production, Gower’s continuing and growing presence might be gauged by his having a monograph series; a society; an international congress that last met in Valladolid, Spain; five volumes of conference proceedings (with more in the works); volumes in Brepols’s Disputatio and the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature; and a Facebook page.

With the benefit of hindsight, the subtitle of John H. Fisher’s ground-breaking 1964 study John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer now sounds curiously defensive about the validity of its subject, even if (despite its title) that book did more than any to free Gower from Chaucer’s shadow and to reestablish him as an author in his own right. The restoration of Gower’s reputation as a poet was effected by others. With respect to Gower’s English poetry – Gower’s massive (33,000-line) Confessio Amantis is most important here, although a substantial (much shorter) poem on the coronation of Henry IV also survives – C.S. Lewis and Christopher Ricks played significant parts, as have several of the contributors to the present volume. But Gower was prolific also in French and Latin, and Siân Echard – co-translator of the Latin poems of the predominantly English Confessio, author of several important studies on Gower’s writing and its reception, and editor of the present Companion to Gower – remains one of the most perceptive critics to address the significance of Gower’s Latin and polyglot poetics. Following upon these reassessments, the present volume depicts Gower as an accomplished poet in three languages, although, given the volume’s interest in exploring what Echard terms ‘Gower’s reputation’ (see below), the predominantly English Confessio retains its usual place of prominence.

Now reissued in paperback and otherwise unchanged from its original 2004 form, A Companion to Gower was evidently judiciously conceived, for the collection of fourteen then-new essays have aged well. Perhaps because the Companion was the first of its kind (it remains the only handbook on Gower), Echard apparently felt no need to justify the enterprise or even to make explicit her principles for inclusion, offering in lieu of the customary editor’s introduction a substantial, article-length essay, ‘Introduction: Gower’s Reputation.’ The piece sets an [End Page 736] agenda for the Companion, albeit somewhat obliquely and along lines which do not account for every aspect of the volume. Echard uses ‘reputation’ in a very considered and capacious way: ‘[A]s all of our new encounters [with Gower] will inevitably be mediated through the reputations which have followed the poet down the centuries, it is worth revisiting their roots.’ Echard’s two main contributions – the essay just quoted and her chapter, ‘Gower in Print’ – together with Helen Cooper’s chapter, ‘“This worthy olde writer”: Pericles and Other Gowers, 1592–1640,’ pursue this goal in illuminating ways, as others in passing do as well; it is certain that studies on Gower’s early reception will continue to yield important findings for literary history, and this volume presents an essential starting point.

Other highlights that have unquestionable lasting importance include the biographical study by John Hines, Nathalie Cohen, and Simon Roffey, ‘Iohannes Gower, Armiger, Poeta: Records and Memorials of His Life and Death,’ and Derek Pearsall’s ‘The Manuscripts and Illustrations of Gower’s Works,’ though the latter should be supplemented by the ongoing descriptions of the Gower manuscripts that Pearsall continues to publish in the John Gower Newsletter. Though dated, the volume’s ‘Appendix: A Chronology of Gower Criticism,’ by Siân Echard and Julie Lanz, can easily be supplemented using the online Gower Bibliography, maintained by Mark Allen...

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