Historians on John Gower ed. by Stephen H. Rigby, Siân Echard (review)

Historians on John Gower, a collection of fourteen essays edited by Stephen H. Rigby with Siân Echard, is a major contribution to Gower studies as well as to researchers interested in the pivotal historical moment in which the poet lived and worked. This is a collection that brings "imaginative literature" together with historical documentation to provide a more comprehensive view of one of the most important public voices of the time. By expanding their readings beyond the Confessio Amantis, to include the Mirour de l'omme, Vox clamantis, and the Cronica tripertita, as well as many of the short poems, the contributors achieve the stated aim of the volume as a whole, as noted by the editors: "to offer new information, perspectives and analyses which will help to widen our appreciation of the significance of, and the pleasure provided by, Gower's text[s]" (xxiii).

Divided into six parts, the collection covers ground both familiar and newly cultivated. Martha Carlin sets the stage by offering a "reinterpretation" of Gower's biography, illuminating many of the murky details concerning the poet's whereabouts, his sources of income, his legal entanglements, his marriage to Agnes Groundolf, and "his circle of acquaintances, his testament, and his tomb" (xxiv). Rigby follows, noting the challenges to certainty when faced with a poet who revises frequently, changes his mind, and adds to existing materials after the fact. Some of the questions cited at the end of Rigby's chapter capture these concerns:

[H]ow coherent was Gower's overall ideological position? Does the multiplicity of voices contained in Gower's poems, particularly in the Confessio Amantis, make it impossible to identify Gower's own viewpoint? To what extent did the poet's works rehearse traditional moral and social values and employ inherited conventions and stereotypes and how far did he arrive at, or even desire to set out, his own personal stance in response to specific contemporary events and controversies? Did the poet remain consistent in his political principles between the composition of the Mirour de l'Omme (c. 1376) and the Cronica Tripertita (c. 1400) or did he alter his views in response to the deposition of Richard II in 1399?

(138)

In Part 2, "Gower and Lay Society," David Green offers a reading of "Nobility and Chivalry" in an attempt to identify a consistent view, suggesting in the end that the poet is not to be thought of as a "simple moralist" (164). Gower was "clearly indignant at the failings of the nobility, but his works do not suggest that its members were beyond redemption … while knighthood may have been in need of reform, England and Christendom at large remained very much in need of knighthood" (165). Meanwhile Mark Bailey explores the poet's position on the social disruption caused not only by the lower classes in a full-blown rebellion (1381), but by recurrent outbreaks of the plague. While criticism is aimed at the rebels and their cause, in the end Bailey argues that the "powerful but conventional message changed little" (190), even as the poet revised his work, "confirming him as a social conservative even by the standards of his own age" (190). James Davis's "Towns and Trade" offers an in-depth look at the economic instability caused primarily by the epidemic. He argues that Gower's focus on "prices, quality, coin and the common good" (198) in the Mirour "provides an insight into some of the prevalent attitudes and concerns of the time" (211), including attempts to reform retail trade in London. Anthony Musson ends the section with legal matters, questions concerning Gower's knowledge of the law, and whether he was a lawyer. For Musson, the poet exhibits a notable expertise and involvement in litigation, while at the same time he criticizes lawyers who failed to live up to the highest of standards. "As with the claims for Gower's status as a...