A Companion to Gower

ISBN 10: 1843840006 / ISBN 13: 9781843840008

Published by D.S. Brewer, 2005

Good hardcover with some shelfwear; may have previous owner's name inside. Standard-sized. Seller Inventory # mon0000292968

Synopsis:

Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate were the three poets of their time considered to have founded the English poetic tradition. Gower, like Lydgate, eventually fell victim to changing tastes but is now enjoying renewed scholarly attention. Current work in manuscript studies, linguistic studies, vernacularity, translation, politics, and the contexts of literary production has found a rich source in Gower's trilingual, learned, and politically engaged corpus. This Companion to Gower offers essays by scholars from Britain and North America, covering Gower's works in all three of his languages; they consider his relationships to his literary sources, and to his social, material and historical contexts; and they offer an overview of the manuscript, linguistic, and editorial traditions. Five essays concentrate specifically on the Confessio Amantis, Gower's major Middle English work, reading it in terms of its relationship to vernacular and classical models, its poetic style, and its treatment of such themes as politics, kingship, gender, sexuality, authority, authorship and self-governance. A reference bibliography, arranged as a chronology of criticism, concludes the volume.
Contributors J.A. BURROW, ARDIS BUTTERFIELD, NATHALIE COHEN, E.H. COOPER, SIAN ECHARD, ROBERT EPSTEIN, JOHN HINES, EDWARD MOORE, DEREK PEARSALL, RUSSELL PECK, A.G. RIGG, SIMON ROFFEY, JEREMY J. SMITH, DIANE WATT, WINTHROP WETHERBEE, ROBERT F. YEAGER.
SIAN ECHARD is associate professor, Department of English, University of British Columbia.
The Companion can serve as an introduction to Gower and his works for the advanced undergraduate or graduate student, and the essays will also be of interest to experts in Middle English studies and in Gower.

About the Authors: The late Derek Pearsall was Emeritus Gurney Professor of Middle English Literature at Harvard University; he wrote extensively on Chaucer, Gower, Langland and Lydgate, including biographies of Chaucer and Lydgate, an edition of the C-text of Langland's Piers Plowman.

Professor Diane Watt is Head of the School of English and Languages, University of Surrey. Secretaries of God won the 1998 Foster Watson Memorial Gift.

Jeremy Smith was professor of English philology at Glasgow, where he remains a senior research fellow and emeritus professor, and an honorary professor at St Andrews. His specialisms include English historical linguistics, medieval studies, and book history, combined recently in Transforming Early English (2020).

JOHN HINES is Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University.

R.F. YEAGER is Emeritus Professor of English Literature and Language, University of West Florida.

Bibliographic Details

Title: A Companion to Gower
Publisher: D.S. Brewer
Publication Date: 2005
Binding: hardcover
Condition: Good