Gower in Context(s). Scribal, Linguistic, Literary and Socio-Historical Readings edited by Laura Filardo-Llamas, Brian Gastle, and Marta Gutiérrez Rodríguez (review)

This special issue of ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa, a journal published by the Universidad de Valladolid (Spain), includes ten essays that are based on papers presented at the Second International Gower Congress in Valladolid in July 2011. In the Introduction, the editors explain that their aim is to “shed light on the interpretation of Gower in different contexts” (p. 7). As they themselves acknowledge, the notion of context is “elusive” (p. 7). This means that, despite the editors’ attempt at providing a theory-informed methodology, the collection does not derive its strength from a sense of common purpose or an engagement with the notion of context. Rather, the strength of this special issue comes from the diversity of arguments and approaches that showcase the continued growth of Gower scholarship. The essays are grouped in three parts: “Manuscript Context,” “Socio-Historical Context,” and “Literary and Linguistic Context.” These categories are themselves somewhat elusive, too, as not all essays fit neatly under their assigned category. All essays are, nevertheless, well worth reading.

Part I, “Manuscript Context,” is comprised of three essays. The first one, Ruenchuan Ma’s “Vernacular Accessus: Text and Gloss in Gower’s Confessio Amantis and Christine de Pizan’s Épitre Othéa,” argues that the Confessio and Épitre Othéa borrow the methods of accessus ad auctores in order to apply the authority of Latin to vernacular writing, but they do so differently. According to Ma, in the section on labor in Book IV, Gower theorizes about the vernacular’s potential for developing a complex literary language and establishes Latin as a necessary point of departure. Christine, though, “performs Gower’s theories … by showing that a vernacular language can successfully articulate commentary and exegesis with success” (p. 27). Christine demonstrates the vernacular’s use of literary capacities by engaging with Latin learning and developing readings of Latin texts that are independent of them. Ma’s analyses are subtle and persuasive. The second essay in this section, “The Margins in the Iberian Manuscripts of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis: Language, Authority and Readership,” by Tamara Pérez-Fernández, examines some of the possible reasons why the Portuguese and Castilian versions of the Confessio translated the Latin apparatus of the English original and eliminated most of the marginal annotations. Her main analysis, though, centers on the effect that the elimination of Latin (with the exception of a few proverbs) has on the experience of reading the Portuguese and Castilian versions. Pérez-Fernández argues that by eliminating the Latin sections, the Iberian translations present Gower, primarily, as a compiler of stories to the detriment of other roles, such as author and commentator. Reading Ma’s essay side by side with Pérez-Fernández’s raises some provocative questions about the status of the vernacular in the Castilian and Portuguese translations. The final essay in Part I is Rosemarie McGerr’s “Gower’s Confessio and the Nova Statuta Angliae: Royal Lessons in English Law.” McGerr notes that a copy of the Nova Statuta Angliae, which includes an account of Edward II’s deposition, may have been commissioned by Richard II and that Gower was probably familiar with it. She compares the opening of Nova Statuta to Book VII of the Confessio and sees both texts as models of a “hybrid discourse” about kingship and the law. Both employ the discourses of romance, religion, the law, and of advice to princes in order to argue “for the king’s responsibility to uphold England’s laws” (p. 46). In combining all these discourses, Gower reinvents the mirror for princes genre.

Jerome Mandel’s “Conflict Resolution in The Wife of Bath’s Tale and Gower’s...