BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Nicholson, Peter. An Annotated Index to the Commentary on John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Binghamtom, N. Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1989, 593 p.

Useful bibliography of criticism on Gower's masterwork.

Yeager, Robert F. John Gower Materials: A Bibliography through 1979. New York: Garland, 1981, 155 p.

Provides an annotated bibliography of Gower criticism and a list of editions of his works.

BIOGRAPHY

Fisher, John H. John Gower, Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer. New York: New York University Press, 1964, 378 p.

The standard biography of the poet.

CRITICISM

Craun, Edwin D. “Confessing the deviant speaker: verbal deception in the Confessio Amantis.” In Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker, pp. 113-56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Reflects on the use of speech by the various characters in the Confessio Amantis.

Donavin, Georgiana. Incest Narratives and the Structure of Gower's Confessio Amantis. Victoria, B. C.: University of Victoria, 1993, 103 p.

Contends that the incest narratives in the Confessio Amantis “teach Amans to repudiate the Court of Love and to substitute contemplation for the passionate pursuit.”

Echard, Siân. “Pre-Texts: Tables of Contents and the Reading of John Gower's Confessio Amantis.” Medium Aevum 66, no. 2 (1997): 270-87.

Considers how editorial interventions in the text of the Confessio Amantis affect its reception by readers.

———. “With Carmen's Help: Latin Authorities in the Confessio Amantis.” Studies in Philology XCV, no. 1 (winter 1998): 1-40.

Considers the significance and impact of Gower's extensive use of Latin in the Confessio Amantis.

Ferster, Judith. “O Political Gower.” In Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Poilitics of Counsel in Later Medieval England, pp. 110-36. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

Examines “Gower's ideas about advice to the king and the role of ‘the people’ in government” as expressed in several of his major works.

Gallacher, Patrick J. Love, the Word, and Mercury: A Reading of John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975, 196 p.

Analyzes numerous conversations in the poem, which enact a “process which shows that a realization of the inadequacy of words results in a desire for the Word by conceptual necessity.”

Itô, Masayoshi. “The Sense of Correspondence in Confessio Amantis.” In John Gower, the Medieval Poet, pp. 3-24. Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976.

Analyzes the organizing principle of “parallels and correspondences” that governs the Confessio Amantis.

Nicholson, Peter. “The Man of Law's Tale: What Chaucer Really Owed to Gower.” Chaucer Review 26, no. 2 (1991): 153-74.

Demonstrates that Chaucer's debt to Gower was greater than many have acknowledged.

Pearsall, Derek. “John Gower.” In Gower and Lydgate, by Derek Pearsall, edited by Geoffrey Bullough, pp. 5-22. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1969.

Surveys Gower's major works, regarding the poet as primarily a moralist.

Peck, Russell A. Kingship & Common Profit in Gower's Confessio Amantis. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978, 204 p.

Examines “the complex plan of moral reform which Gower enunciates in his Confessio Amantis as a remedy for the ills of his time.”

Simpson, James. Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, 321 p.

Includes several chapters on the Confessio Amantis, placing the work in the tradition of literary humanism.

Wickert, Maria. Studies in John Gower, translated by Robert J. Meindl. Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1981, 243 p.

Examines the Vox Clamantis in terms of Gower's world view and political ideas, and its relation to the tradition of the sermon and devotional literature.

Yeager, Robert F. John Gower's Poetic: The Search for a New Arion. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1990, 289 p.

Full-length study that seeks, through an analysis of his works, to determine Gower's poetic theory.

———, ed. Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange. Victoria. B. C.: English Literary Studies, University of Victoria, 1991, 152 p.

Collection of essays exploring various aspects of the relationship between Gower and Chaucer.

———. “The Body Politic and the Politics of Bodies in the Poetry of John Gower.” In The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, pp. 145-65. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1999.

Investigates how, in Gower's poetry, images of “the body and/or bodies consistently accompany political statements.”

Zeeman, Nicolette. “The Verse of Courtly Love in the Framing Narrative of the Confessio Amantis.” Medium Aevum 60, no. 2 (1991): 222-40.

Analyzes how Gower “appropriates the verse of courtly love … for moral and philosophical purposes” in the Confessio Amantis.

Additional coverage of Gower's life and career is contained in the following sources published by the Gale Group: British Writers; Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 146; Literature Resource Center; and Reference Guide to English Literature