Gower's Afterlives

Sponsoring Organization(s)

John Gower Society

Organizer Name

Brian Gastle

Organizer Affiliation

Western Carolina Univ.

Presider Name

Steele Nowlin

Presider Affiliation

Hampden-Sydney College

Paper Title 1

Textual Revenants: The Emperor, the Masons, and Gower's Tomb

Presenter 1 Name

Kara L. McShane

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Ursinus College

Paper Title 2

Chitre, Jargoune, or Seie? Gower’s Birds and Twenty-First Century Biotranslation Theory

Presenter 2 Name

Andrea Schutz

Presenter 2 Affiliation

St. Thomas Univ.

Paper Title 3

Gower and Eighteenth-Century Literary Culture

Presenter 3 Name

R. F. Yeager

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Univ. of West Florida

Start Date

11-5-2017 1:30 PM

Session Location

Schneider 1330

Description

This session explores the literary and cultural legacy of John Gower through his “afterlives,” conceived in the broadest terms. Possible subjects include physical survivals of his texts (manuscripts and early printed editions); his stories (borrowed, excerpted, variously transformed, e.g., late medieval Iberian prose translations, Pericles, Greene’s Vision), or the figure of Gower himself (e.g., Southwark tomb and other representations, historical fiction past and present, digital media). Possible questions include: How can our approaches to Gower’s “afterlives” extend into other languages? What conceptual models might performance studies, dramaturgy, or medievalism bring to our understanding of Gower's works? Can the history of Gower’s reception across time, languages and media transform how we think about canon formation, performance theory, or world literature paradigms?

Brian Gastle