John Gower Trilingual Poet

These essays demonstrate John Gower's mastery of the three languages of medieval England - Latin, French and English. They examine the cultural re-definitions which his translations of literary traditions and languages achieved.

New essays on aspects of Gower's poetry, viewed through the lens of the self and beyond.

Essays considering the relationship between Gower's texts and the physical ways in which they were first manifested.

John Gower's works examined as part of a tradition of "official" writings on behalf of the Crown. John Gower has been criticised for composing verse propaganda for the English state, in support of the regime of Henry IV, at the end of his distinguished career. However, as the author of this book shows, using evidence from Gower's English, French and Latin poems alongside contemporary state papers, pamphlet-literature, and other historical prose, Gower was not the only medieval writer to be so employed in serving a monarchy's goals. Professor Carlson also argues that Gower's late poetry is the apotheosis of the fourteenth-century tradition of state-official writing which lay at the origin of the literary Renaissance in Ricardian and Lancastrian England. David Carlsonis Professor in the Department of English, University of Ottawa.