John Gower's Poetic is a new study of Gower's complete poetry. Considered are Vox Clamantis, Mirour de l'Omme, Traitié pour les Amantz marietz, Cinkante Balades, Confessio Amantis, and `To King Henry IV, In Praise of Peace'. In fiveintegrative chapters, Yeger demonstrates that Gower - far from being the lugubrious moralist and journeyman craftsman as which he is often portrayed -was in fact a writer of broad learning and ambition, whose work was consistently shaped bya poetic theory of profound originality. To demonstrate this, John Gower's Poetic re-examines Gower's work from the basic levels of orthography, grammar, vocabulary, and metrics, to his enduring macrocosmic themes; in the process, Yeager shows that Gower saw himself as an `auctor', or `poete', in the manner of Dante, Machaut, Froissart, and Deschamps. The book concludes with an extensive, fresh reading of Gower's greatest poem, the Confessio Amantis. Professor R. F. Yeager teaches in the Department of English and Foreign Languages, University of West Florida, Pensacola.

Eleven essays by influential scholars (from C.S. Lewis to A.J. Minnis] provide an introduction for students to Gower's Confessio Amantisand its important criticism.

Winner of the 2022 John Hurt Fisher Award from the John Gower SocietyFirst comprehensive catalogue of the manuscripts of one of the most important medieval works, with full descriptions of their features.The Confessio Amantis is John Gower's major work in English, written around the time that his acquaintance Geoffrey Chaucer was writing the Canterbury Tales. Extant manuscripts are numerous. At the end of the nineteenth century G. C. Macaulay had described the forty manuscripts then known to survive in the introduction to his edition, but some of these descriptions were very brief, and of course the other nine of whose existence he was then unaware were not included. This descriptive catalogue of all of the surviving manuscripts containing the Confessio is the first work to bring together extensive detailed descriptions of its forty-nine complete manuscripts and numerous fragments and excerpts; it will enable scholars of Middle English literature and manuscript studies to compare features across the corpus of surviving manuscripts or read detailed descriptions of individual manuscripts. Each description in this catalogue covers the manuscript's contents, artwork, physical qualities such as size, material, collation, foliation, etc., as well as additions by later users and provenance. There is also a lengthy introduction giving an overview of the corpus, and appendices for reference to the current whereabouts of the manuscripts, fragments and excerpts, and listing Gower's Latin and French works that appear in some of the manuscripts. Eight colour illustrations provide context for discussions of the miniatures and illuminated borders of some manuscripts. surviving manuscripts or read detailed descriptions of individual manuscripts. Each description in this catalogue covers the manuscript's contents, artwork, physical qualities such as size, material, collation, foliation, etc., as well as additions by later users and provenance. There is also a lengthy introduction giving an overview of the corpus, and appendices for reference to the current whereabouts of the manuscripts, fragments and excerpts, and listing Gower's Latin and French works that appear in some of the manuscripts. Eight colour illustrations provide context for discussions of the miniatures and illuminated borders of some manuscripts. surviving manuscripts or read detailed descriptions of individual manuscripts. Each description in this catalogue covers the manuscript's contents, artwork, physical qualities such as size, material, collation, foliation, etc., as well as additions by later users and provenance. There is also a lengthy introduction giving an overview of the corpus, and appendices for reference to the current whereabouts of the manuscripts, fragments and excerpts, and listing Gower's Latin and French works that appear in some of the manuscripts. Eight colour illustrations provide context for discussions of the miniatures and illuminated borders of some manuscripts. surviving manuscripts or read detailed descriptions of individual manuscripts. Each description in this catalogue covers the manuscript's contents, artwork, physical qualities such as size, material, collation, foliation, etc., as well as additions by later users and provenance. There is also a lengthy introduction giving an overview of the corpus, and appendices for reference to the current whereabouts of the manuscripts, fragments and excerpts, and listing Gower's Latin and French works that appear in some of the manuscripts. Eight colour illustrations provide context for discussions of the miniatures and illuminated borders of some manuscripts. for reference to the current whereabouts of the manuscripts, fragments and excerpts, and listing Gower's Latin and French works that appear in some of the manuscripts. Eight colour illustrations provide context for discussions of the miniatures and illuminated borders of some manuscripts.

Throughout the tales in the Confessio Amantis, John Gower proposes that reciprocal love is the remedy to what ails man and society. This book explores how Gower uses the aspects of love in the Confessio-the notions of kinde, or passionate love, and reason in the sphere of love; honeste love in the Marriage Tales of the Four Wives; passionate and excessive love in the Forsaken Women's tales; and Amans's lovesickness. In her thorough examination of Gower's work, Ellen S. Bakalian shows how Gower emphasizes and illustrates a belief that reason must rule man in all things, including his natural instincts to love.

Essays considering the relationship between Gower's texts and the physical ways in which they were first manifested.

Offers a comprehensive new reading of the most important English work of Chaucer's best-known contemporary