Gower in Seminar: The 'Confessio Amantis' as Publishing Opportunity for Graduate Students
- Author/Editor
- Beidler, Peter G
- Title
- Gower in Seminar: The 'Confessio Amantis' as Publishing Opportunity for Graduate Students
- Published
- Beidler, Peter G. "Gower in Seminar: The 'Confessio Amantis' as Publishing Opportunity for Graduate Students." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 202-08. ISBN 9781603290999
- Review
- Building on his experience in the 1980s of publishing with seven students a series of essays in a volume called "John Gower's Literary Transformations in the 'Confessio Amantis'" (University Press of America, 1982), Beidler here describes a more recent venture of a like kind, the preparation with a dozen graduate students of a volume to which he and these students each contribute an essay. Like the early book, this publication treats Gower's transformation of his sources, in this instance specifically of a tale in Nicholas Trevet's "Chronicle" into the story of Constance in the "Confessio." The essay assignments are arranged according to 13 episodes "or plot elements" identified in Trevet's account; to guide students, Beidler presents his essay as a model which each student then follows in analyzing her or his particular plot element. The resulting collection became a web publication posted in April, 2006 as http://www.wcu.edu/johngower/scholarship/beidler/index.html. Beidler offers his rationale for such undertakings: "where I got to teach a graduate seminar, I tried to plan at least one activity that got my students directly involved in a joint project that could, if all went well, lead to a conference presentation or to a publication" (202); offering a course that includes the CA "provides an opportunity not only to teach the work of a fine medieval writer but also to help fledgling graduate students." [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1]
- Date
- 2011
- Gower Subjects
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
- Confessio Amantis