Maria Wickert: Studies in John Gower

Studies in John Gower is a translation of Maria Wickert’s Studien zu John Gower, the book that began the modern study of the Vox Clamantis. It is a monograph in six chapters, the first five on various aspects of the Vox — textual development, the vision of the Peasants’ Revolt, influence of the medieval sermon, the open letter to Richard II, world view — and the sixth a penetrating study of Gower’s narrative technique in the Confessio Amantis.

Robert J. Meindl is emeritus professor of English at California State University, Sacramento. His Tulane University dissertation (1965), directed by Robert M. Lumiansky, was a study of narrative technique in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. In addition to translating Wickert and occasionally writing poetry, he has published essays on Old and Middle English literature, translated Latin verses by Hugo Grotius and John Barclay, and written a series of articles explicating the Vox Clamantis’ sixth book, a verse translation of which he has also contributed to the Gower Project Wiki Translation.