Venus Genius: The Female Prescription for Innovation explores innovation from different perspectives: historical, scientific, sociological, cultural and practical - all through the feminine lens. It addresses the shortage of women in innovation and how important it is to address this as a first step to inclusion. This book reveals that any innovator can acquire the necessary skills to create meaningful innovation. Venus Genius is about celebrating the duality of the feminine and the masculine in all human beings and dares us to activate both energies to create innovation that brings true value to our world. To date, the world (and innovation) has been mainly driven by masculine energy, and we can no longer ignore gender. This book will help you discover that you have latent feminine skills and that, wherever you stand on the masculine/feminine spectrum, rebalancing towards the opposite makes you a more centered human being in your personal and professional life.

Middle English is a student guide to the most influential critical writing on Middle English literature. A student guide to the most influential critical writing on Middle English literature. Brings together extracts from some of the major authorities in the field. Introduces readers to different critical approaches to key Middle English texts. Treats a wide range of Middle English texts, including The Owl and the Nightingale, The Canterbury Tales and Morte d’Arthur. Organized around key critical concerns, such as authorship, genre, and textual form. Each critical concern can be used as the basis for one week’s work in a semester-long course. Enables readers to forge new connections between different approaches.

Gower's use of the persona, the figure of the writer implicated in the text, is the main theme of this book. While it traces the development of Gower's voice through his major works, it concentrates on the dialogue of Amans and Genius in the Confessio Amantis. It argues that Gower negotiates problems of politics and problems of love by means of an analogy between political ethics and the rules of fin amour; Amans and Genius are both drawn from and occupied with amatory and ethical traditions, and their discourse produces a series of attempts to find a coherent and rational union of lover and ruler. The volume also argues that Gower's goal is poetic as well as political: through the personae, Gower's readers experience the pains and pleasures of erotic and social love. Gower's personae voice potential responses to exemplary experience, prompting readers to feel and to judge, and moving them to become better lovers and better rulers. Gower's analogy between fin amour and politics brings the affects of the lover to the action of government, and suggests for both love and rule the moderation that brings peace and joy. Matthew W. Irvin is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Chair of the Medieval Studies Program at Sewanee.