Lordship And Literature: John Gower And The Politics Of The Great Household

By Author: Christ Paul
Total Articles: 55
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The year 2008 marked the 600th anniversary of the death of John Gower. This was commemorated by the John Gower Society's first international conference '1408-2008: The Age of Gower' held in London, and by a strand devoted to papers on Gower in the New Chaucer Society's biennial conference, hosted by Swansea University. The resurgence of interest in John Gower in the twenty-first century is further evidenced by his web presence. Sites devoted to current Gower scholarship include the Gower Project and the John Gower Society, which provide links to online texts, recent publications, teaching resources and forthcoming events. There is even a John Gower blog: 'The payge of Gowere'. If Chaucer's star cannot be said to be waning, Gower's is certainly rising. Gower's works, in English, Latin and French are being studied once again at postgraduate and undergraduate level in North America and the UK, and there have been a number of MBT Chapa recent books on Gower published in the last decade. Elliot Kendall's study, Lordship and Literature, is a welcome addition to this ...
... rapidly growing field.

John H. Fisher, in his tellingly entitled study, John Gorver, Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer (1965), lamented that 'it has been the fate of John Gower to appear to succeeding ages almost constantly in the company of Geoffrey Chaucer'. Contemporary scholarship has, however, succeeded in turning the tide of well over five hundred years of responses to Gower. Kendall exemplifies current trends, focusing on Gower's work in this case Confessio Amantis in its own right. Although he pays due attention to Chaucer's poetry where appropriate, Kendall also draws comparisons with a range of other texts, such as William Langland's Piers Plowman, Sir John Clanvowe's Boke of Cupide, Julian of Norwich's Showings, and the anonymous Cleanness and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. What distinguishes Kendall's approach is not the literary company that his Gower keeps indeed literary contextualization is not a major concern of MBT Lami this study but the historical understanding that Kendall brings to his reading of Gower. Kendall's argument, which is refreshingly straightforward, is that Gower, a landowner as well as a poet, understood the great household to be at the heart of a properly functioning society. Gower is famous for his shifting political allegiances and apparent political foresight: the dedication to Richard II in the first version of Confessio was subsequently replaced with a celebration of Henry of Derby, the future Henry IV But, in Kendall's interpretation; it is not individual kings who matter to Gower. Kendall contends that 'the aristocratic household and affinity is the key to the politics of the Confessio1. In his conclusion, Kendall argues that even the so-called 'Ricardian' version of the poem marginalises the commissioning scene in which Gower describes himself encountering Richard II sailing down the Thames in a barge.

Kendall's approach is not highly theorised, although it is indebted to Pierre Bourdieu. Rather, it is inter, or cross-disciplinary. Kendall freely acknowledges that he is influenced by the scholarship of a number of medieval historians, such as Christine Carpenter, Simon Walker and John Watts. Indeed, in the first half of the book in particular, Lordship and Literature reads at times more like a survey of medieval English history than a study of a major work of poetry. In this respect the titles of the first two chapters are revealing. From the perspective of a literary scholar, Kendall's understanding of medieval social and political history is certainly impressive and he brings to his readings of Gower new insights and astute observations. What is sacrificed by this approach is, unfortunately, sustained close engagement with contemporary Gower criticism.