English Works.

Author/Editor
Kobayashi, Yoshiko.

Title
English Works.

Published
Kobayashi, Yoshiko. "English Works." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 328-40.

Review
Amid the "thematic continuity" across the Gowerian corpus (329), the CA is nonetheless "a new departure" (328). Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the Statue is retold in the VC unrelieved in all its apocalyptic horror, while in the CA, the same story is followed with the hopeful exemplum of Arion combined with "an allusion . . . to the peaceable kingdom in Isaiah 11:6" (329). The CA offers healing and redemption to the individual and society (330-36), with the reader "protreptic[ally]" sharing in the restorative process undergone by Amans (331, 336). Written for the new king Henry IV, "In Praise of Peace" continues the theme of healing, especially as a "salve" against the "pestilence" of war (337). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.]

Date
2017

Gower Subjects
Confessio Amantis
In Praise of Peace
Vox Clamantis