John Gower\u27s Magical Rhetoric

In Book 6 of the Confessio Amantis, telling the “Tale of Ulysses and Telegonus,” John Gower says of the former, “He was a gret rethorien / He was a gret magicien,” thereby capturing deep connections between rhetoric and magic. The seriously flawed necromancers of Book 6 exemplify only negative connections, however. Ulysses, by embracing verbal trickery and deploying his knowledge of the liberal arts for inferior aims, fails as both hero and speaker. Worse than Ulysses is Nectanabus, whose deceitful “carectes” seem to serve as a critique against spoken enchantments. Later in Book 7, however, Gower recuperates a concept of magical rhetoric. He does so by transitioning from Nectanabus—Alexander the Great’s first tutor—to Aristotle, the more mature conqueror’s adviser. Through allusions to the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum and Rhetorica ad Alexandrum as well as to Latin translations and commentaries on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Gower outlines a syncretic discipline with the potential to charm audiences with the plain truth. In a lecture on rhetoric’s place among the liberal arts, he insists that persuasive speech is much like the philosopher’s stone or medicinal herbs: all three require incantatory words for great effect, though words are more powerful than other numinous objects. To compose his own incantations and mesmerize his audience, Gower builds in figures of repetition, especially anaphora, as a bolster to a plain style, and he attributes enchanting speech to the Augustinian Word. By casting verbal enchantment in a Christian light, Gower remediates Ulysses’ and Nectanabus’s faults and theorizes a rhetoric that shuns deceit while it charms with the truth

Hope and Healing in Gower: A Special Issue

Hope and Healing in Gower: A Special Issue is the editor\u27s short introduction to Accessus 7.1

Preface to a New English Translation of Gower\u27s Vox Clamantis

Preface to a new English translation of John Gower\u27s Vox Clamanti

Introducing Gower Shorts

This essay provides an introduction to a special issue of Accessus, entitled Gower Shorts, slightly expanded and revised versions of conference papers presented at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2018-19 and the Modern Language Association Conference in Chicago in 2019

Preface

Co-editors Georgiana Donavin and Eve Salisbury are delighted to feature the work of medievalist and machinimatographer Sarah L. Higley in this issue of Accessus. In a machinima production that debuted during the Third International Congress of the John Gower Society at the University of Rochester (30 June through 3 July, 2014), Higley refashions three tales from the Confessio Amantis for her film The Lover\u27s Confession. In this issue of Accessus, we present the film and Higley\u27s commentary on the intersections between her creative work with machinima and scholarly issues surrounding The Tale of the Travelers and the Angel, The Tale of Canace and Machaire, and The Tale of Florent. Higley\u27s work captures our philosophy concerning new media representations of premodern literature

Foreword

The co-editors of Accessus are pleased to present Intersex and the Pardoner\u27s Body by Kim Zarins

Preface to a New English Translation of the Minor Latin Works of John Gower

The editors\u27 preface to Robert J. Meindl and Mark T. Riley\u27s new English translation of the Minor Latin Works of John Gower

Foreword

This is the Foreword to Accessus 5.

Preface

Co-editors Georgiana Donavin and Eve Salisbury thank the readers of Accessus for an enthusiastic reception of the first issue and summarize the contents of this second issue. The second issue showcases opportunities inherent in online publishing, such as the ability to produce extended commentaries and offer video streams. Robert J. Meindl\u27s Semper Venalis: Gower\u27s Avaricious Lawyers and Linda Marie Zaerr\u27s How the Axe Falls: A Retrospective on Thirty-five Years of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Performance, respectively, realize these possibilities in online publishing while adding substantially and insightfully to our knowledge of important fourteenth-century poems from England

Foreword

Foreword for Accessus volume 6, issue 1