Gower\u27s Herte-Thoght : Thinking, Feeling, Healing

While much has been said about the ethical principles of Gower\u27s poetry, less has been said about his understanding of the body, its principal organs, and its relation to the medical discourse of the time. This short paper, presented initially as part of the Hope and Healing Symposium sponsored by The Gower Project, approaches the poet\u27s work from a more medically inflected point of view, one that suggests a stronger kinship between the material body and its use as a metaphor for the body politic. Gower appears to be situated within a continuing debate launched by Aristotle and taken up by Galen about whether the heart or the brain governed the body and housed the soul. The heart-brain relation signified in the oft-repeated phrase herte\u27s thoght in the Confessio suggests the poet\u27s recognition of the symbiotic kinship between thinking and feeling, an interconnectedness incapsulated in an illustration in Geraldus de Hardywyck\u27s Epitomata seu Reparationes totius philosophiae naturalis Aristotelis. Also relevant to a more medically inflected reading of the poet\u27s major works is his understanding of Anger as heart disease in the Mirour de l\u27Omme and the dis-ease of community exemplified by the Rising of 1381 in the Vox Clamantis. All three works demonstrate the need for hope and healing, both individual and communal, in a troubled late medieval England

Magic, Religion, and Science: A Special Issue

Preface to a special issue of Accessus on magic, religion, and science in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

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

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

Introduction

This Introduction by co-editors Georgiana Donavin and Eve Salisbury celebrates the publication of the first issue of Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media, a biannual publication of The Gower Project. The Introduction provides a short history of The Gower Project and explains the scope of Accessus: an e-journal dedicated to articles composed in electronic formats on Western European literature written before 1660. This first issue is dedicated to scholarship on the fourteenth-century English poet John Gower, who inspired the Project and this journal. For a decade The Gower Project has supported exciting new interpretations of Gower\u27s poems that arise from theoretical and technological innovations. A brief summary of articles by Lynn Arner, Candace Barrington, Jonathan Hsy, and Tory V. Pearman prepares the reader for provocative analyses of Gower\u27s trilingual oeuvre

Foreword

Co-editors Georgiana Donavin and Eve Salisbury welcome readers to Accessus 2.2

Preface

This preface introduces Accessus 4.2

Foreword

In this Foreword, the editors summarize the articles published in Accessus 3.1 and offer conclusions about their importance for Gower Studies and contemporary medical practice

Foreword

This is the Foreword to Accessus 5.