Historians on John Gower

John Gower's poetry offers an important and immediate response to the turbulent events of his day. The essays here examine his life and his works from an historical angle, bringing out fresh new insights.

The late fourteenth century was the age of the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, the Hundred Years War, the deposition of Richard II, the papal schism and the emergence of the heretical doctrines of John Wyclif and the Lollards. These social, political and religious crises and conflicts were addressed not only by preachers and by those involved in public affairs but also by poets, including Chaucer and Langland. Above all, though, it is in the verse of John Gower that we find the most direct engagement with contemporary events. Yet, surprisingly, few historians have examined Gower's responses to these events or have studied the broader moral and philosophical outlook which he used to make sense of them.

Here, a number of eminent medievalists seek to demonstrate what historians can add to our understanding of Gower's poetry and his ideas about society (the nobility and chivalry, the peasants and the 1381 revolt, urban life and the law), the Church (the clergy, papacy, Lollardy, monasticism, and the friars) gender (masculinity and women and power), politics (political theory and the deposition of Richard II) and science and astronomy. The book also offers an important reassessment of Gower's biography based on newly-discovered primary sources.

STEPHEN RIGBY is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Social and Economic History at the University of Manchester; SIAN ECHARD is Professor of English, University of British Columbia.

Contributors: Mark Bailey, Michael Bennett, Martha Carlin, James Davis, Seb Falk, Christopher Fletcher, David Green, David Lepine, Martin Heale, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Musson, Stephen Rigby, Jens Röhrkasten.

STEPHEN H. RIGBY is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Social and Economic History at the University of Manchester, UK.

MARK BAILEY was recently High Master of St Paul's School, London, and a visiting fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He was previously a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and is now the Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. His numerous publications include Medieval Suffolk. An economic and social history 1200-1500 (2007) and After the Black Death. Economy, society and the law in fourteenth-century England (2021).

James Davis is a reader in medieval history at Queen's University Belfast. He has published widely on the economic and social history of late medieval England, with a focus on markets, trade and small towns.

ANTHONY MUSSON is Head of Research at Historic Royal Palaces.

MARTIN HEALE is Reader in Medieval History at the University of Liverpool.