John Gower’s Poetic: The Search for a New Arion by R. F. Yeager (review)

REVIEWS World," "The Religious World of the Laity," and "The World of the Chris­ tian Humanist," plus a "Coda on Method." Like Timothy Verdon's earlier volume, Monasticism and the Arts, the essays are generally good, and, unlike some volumes of this sort, the volume holds together. Verdon's intelligent introduction sets a standard that many, though not all, the essays meet. Several essays stand out in this collection. Kaspar Elm's piece about the images of Augustine created by the Augustinian canons and the Augustinian hermits is fascinating. W illiam Hood has made a good contribution on Fra Angelico at San Marco, although one wishes he had provided more than a sentence about Dominican imagery before the quattrocento. Creighton Gilbert has presented a fine analysis of some elementsofCarmelite imagery, including a compelling reading ofthe great Carmelite altarpiece of Pietro Lorenzetti. Kathleen Giles Arthur has writ­ ten a particularlystimulating piece about cult objects and patronage ofthe confraternity of Gesu Pellegrino. Marcia Hall has some important insights about Savonarola and artistic style in Florence. Several essays provided interesting and useful data but needed more analysis. Gene Brucker's survey ofmonastic establishments in Florence and Daniel Lesnick's piece on preaching in Florence are the best examples. Rab Hatfield's essay on Franciscan spirituality and Salvatore Camporeale's on the religious crisis ofthe late quattrocento were the least illuminating parts of the collection. There are two essays that really do not belong in this volume, and they detract from the editors' goal ofproviding a collection of essays with a clear focus. One deals with Florentine confraternities today, and the other largely focuses on sacri monti in Iberia and the New World. This volume, like its predecessor, is a success. There are no bad essays, and most make real contributions. Each essay has full citations, and they are useful because they cumulatively contain bibliographical materials from a number of disciplines. The volume contains numerous plates. We eagerly await more volumes orchestrated by Timothy Verdon. WILLIAM R. COOK State University of New York, Geneseo R. F. YEAGER.John Gower's Poetic: The Searchfor a New Arion. Publica­ tions of the John Gower Society, vol. 2. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990. Pp. 289. $70.00. This is a major study ofa major poet by a man whose presence amid Gower studies over the past two decades has become so prominent as to constitute 217 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER in itself a scholarly majority. Yeager's affection for Gower began in 1970, when he studied him at Oxford with R. A. Alton. His dissertation, 'John Gower's Poetic" (Yale University, 1976), first laid out the terrain ofhis most recent book.But Yeager's interest was not simply in poetics or a particular poet.He has been from the beginning preoccupied with audiences-with who read Gower when and with their responses. And over the past decade and a halfhe more than anyone else has shaped Gower's living audience.In the new book he reads Gower as though Gower were himselfan audiencean audience of the ancients and the international writers of his own day­ and also as a self-conscious writer deeply concerned with shaping the audience of his own day. In reading Yeager, what we get is something like Gower as an institution, an institution of which Yeager himself is an important part. To understand the tone of this book and what it represents, it is useful to understand what its author was doing during the fifteen or so years of its composition. Immediately upon completing his degree at Yale, Yeager began his preparation ofjohn Gower Materials: A Bibliography through 1979 (New York: Garland, 1981). But during those retrospective years he also was concerned with who might be interested in reading Gower now. In 1981 he set up the first all-Gower session in the history of the Modern Language Association, a session that was remarkably well attended and out of which he found a nucleus for the Gower Society, an organization he founded in 1982.With the founding of the GowerSociety he created the Gower Newsletter, apublication now in its tenth year that has grown from a letter to a mini-journal...