Description
Book SynopsisEssays shedding fresh and significant light on Gower's poetry, major and minor, as it was received, read, and re-produced in England and in Iberia from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. John Gower's great poem, the Confessio Amantis, was the first work of English literature translated into any European language. Occasioned by the existence in Spain of fifteenth-century Portuguese and Spanish manuscripts ofthe Confessio, the nineteen essays brought together here represent new and original approaches to Gower's role in Anglo-Iberian literary relations. They include major studies of the palaeography of the Iberian manuscripts;of the ownership history of the Portuguese Confessio manuscript; of the glosses of Gowerian manuscripts; and of the manuscript of the Yale Confessio Amantis. Other essays situate the translations amidst Anglo-Spanish relations generally in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; examine possible Spanish influences on Gower's writing; and speculate on possible providers of the Confessio to Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt and queenof Portugal. Further chapters broaden the scope of the volume. Amongst other topics, they look at Gower's use of Virgilian/Dantean models; classical gestures in the Castilian translation; Gower's conscious contrasting of epic ideals and courtly romance; nuances of material goods and the idea of "the good" in the Confessio; Marxian aesthetics, Balzac, and Gowerian narrative in late medieval trading culture between England and Iberia; reading the Confessio through the lens of gift exchange; literary form in Gower's later Latin poems; Gower and Alain Chartier as international initiators of a new "public poetry"; and the modern sales history of manuscript and earlyprinted copies of the Confessio, and what it reveals about literary trends. Ana Sáez Hidalgo is Associate Professor at the University of Valladolid, Spain; R.F. Yeager is Professor of English and World Languagesand chair of the department at the University of West Florida. Contributors: María Bullón-Fernández, David R. Carlson, Siân Echard, A.S.G. Edwards, Robert R. Edwards, Tiago Viúla de Faria, Andrew Galloway, Fernando Galván, Marta María Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Mauricio Herrero Jiménez, Ethan Knapp, Roger A. Ladd, Alberto Lázaro, María Luisa López-Vidriero Abelló, Matthew McCabe, Alastair J. Minnis, Clara Pascual-Argente, Tamara Para A. Shailor, Winthrop Wetherbee
Trade ReviewEditors Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and R. F. Yeager have assembled essays that significantly enrich Gower studies. * JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY *
[A] remarkable volume. * SPECULUM *
Table of ContentsIntroduction - Ana Saez-Hidalgo and Robert F. Yeager Castilian Script in the Iberian Manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis - Mauricio Herrero Jiménez and Marta María Gutiérrez Rodríguez and Tamara Pérez-Fernández Provenance Interlacing in Spanish Royal Book-Collecting and the Case of the Confessio Amantis [RB MS II-3088] - Maria Luisa Lopez Vidriero Inglorious glosses? - Alastair J Minnis The Yale Gower Manuscript, Beinecke Osborn MS fa.1: Paleographical, Codicological, Technological Challenges and Opportunities - Barbara A Shailor The English Literature of Nájera [1367] from Battlefield Dispatch to the Poets - David R. Carlson At the Nájera Crossroads [1367]: Anglo-Iberian Encounters in the Late Fourteenth Century - Fernando Galván Spanish Literary Influence in England: John Gower and Pedro Alfonso - Robert F. Yeager From Norwich to Lisbon: Factionalism, Personal Association, and Conveying the Confessio Amantis - Tiago Viúla de Faria Gower's Second Cursus - Robert R. Edwards Remembering Antiquity in the Castilian Confessio Amantis - Clara Pascual-Argente Gower and the Epic Past - Winthrop Wetherbee Goods and the Good in the Confessio Amantis - Maria Bullon-Fernandez Gower's Kiste - Andrew Galloway John Gower: Balzac of the Fourteenth Century - Ethan Knapp Gower's Gifts - Roger A. Ladd The Long and the Short of it: On Gower's Forms - Sian Echard "Al université de tout le monde": Public Poetry, English and International - Matthew McCabe Buying Gower's Confessio Amantis in Modern Times - A S G Edwards Gaps and Silences in the Reception of John Gower in Franco's Spain - Alberto Lazaro
