At the 56th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo (May 9–11, 2024), the Lollard Society will be sponsoring three panels in honor of Alastair J. Minnis.
A recent Festschrift for Alastair Minnis focuses on his contributions to the history of literary theory and criticism; these sessions celebrate his importance to three other fields: Gower studies, religious and devotional studies and Chaucer studies.
On Gowerian Poetics, in Honor of Alastair J. Minnis
This session, which focuses on John Gower and is co-sponsored by the Lollard Society and the John Gower Society, Alastair’s colleagues will take up some of his primary commitments to Gower, including politics, multilingualism and glossing practices. This session promises a lively and celebratory discussion of the wide-ranging ways in which Alastair has shaped Gower studies.
Thursday 9 May 2024: 10:00
Session 31
Co-hosted by the John Gower Society.
Organizers: Robyn A. Bartlett, Purdue Univ. and Michael Van Dussen, McGill Univ.
Moderator: Richard Firth Green, Ohio State Univ.
“John Gower, Crafty Bilingual”
Tim William Machan, Univ. of Notre Dame
- Multilingualism has become a prominent topic in recent scholarly discussion, which often emphasizes its rhetorical ingenuity and sociolinguistic implications. With his large literary output in three languages, John Gower has figured prominently in such discussions. Beginning with pragmatic concerns about medieval language, this paper offers a deep dive into what Gower’s “English” (and its component parts) were—using that as a way to reflect on larger implications for personal and social language contact in the Middle Ages. From this vantage, multilingualism appears as both more subtly ubiquitous and less rhetorically flamboyant.
Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia and Gower’s Process of Revision
Eric Weiskott, Boston College
- John Gower’s Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia, the longest of his late, minor Latin poems, occupies a unique position in his career arc, but the poem has received less attention than it would have done were it in English or embedded within Pox clamantis, his massive Latin estates satire. In 2019, R. F. Yeager advanced two interlinked arguments concerning Carmen that Gower studies has yet to digest: (1) the poem, originally composed in the late 1390s, was revised and recast a decade after that in light of Archbishop Thomas Arundel and Henry IV’s anti-Lollard legislation; (2) Carmen was in fact re-addressed and formally presented to Arundel himself at that time, prefaced by the Epistle to Archbishop Arundel, another of Gower’s minor Latin poems and likewise known to have been revised in precisely the same timeframe. The second argument, which I find particularly convincing, challenges scholars’ prior assumption that the poem presented to Arundel by the Epistle was Vox clamantis. The purpose of my paper is to assess the implications of Yeager’s important recent arguments and then to extend them by making an independent study of Gower’s process of revision of these twinned Latin poems.
Gower’s Wycliffian Conundrum
R. F. Yeager, Univ. of West Florida
- John Gower is generally seen by scholars as virulently anti-Lollard, and by and large there is much truth to this. It is never good, however, to paint Gower with too broad a brush, and in the case of his engagement with the thought of John Wyclif this caveat is all the more true. Wyclif presented Gower with a conundrum he eventually solved, but not without significant deliberation. This paper will demonstrate the advisability of a nuanced approach to Gower’s thoughts about Wyclif, and suggest ways in which his opposition to “IoIIardy” might be understood.
Language, Labor, and Materiality in the Confessio Amantis
Ethan Knapp, Ohio State Univ.
- This paper begins with one of the images most familiar to any student of Gower — the memorial statue in Southwark Cathedral in which Gower’s head rests on three volumes representing his major works of poetry. The paper will argue that the sheer monumentality of the books in this image represents an important strand of Gower’s thinking about his poetic vocation. As a maker of books he was not engaged in creating the abstract texts we experience in the age of the printed volume; rather, he saw his work as the creation of perdurable objects, books whose very materiality and solidity stood as a buttress against the ravages of time.
Chaucer’s Authorities: A Roundtable in Honor of Alastair J. Minnis
celebratory discussion of the wide-ranging ways in which Alastair has shaped Gower studies.
This roundtable, consisting of Alastair’s former colleagues and students, will engage with Minnis’s contributions to the study of Chaucer, including the depiction of women, classical sources, with a particular focus on his work on two of the most famous Canterbury pilgrims, the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath.
Thursday 9 May 2024: 13:30
Session 85
Organizers: Michael Van Dussen, McGill Univ. and Robyn A. Bartlett, Purdue Univ.
Moderator: Jessica Brantley, Yale Univ.
A roundtable discussion with Richard Firth Green, Ohio State Univ.; Sarah Elliott Novacich, Rutgers Univ.; Samantha Katz Seal, Univ. of New Hampshire; Robyn A. Bartlett
Lay Learning and Holy Women, in Honor of Alastair J. Minnis
With a focus on preaching, lay learning and holy women, this session promises a lively, celebratory discussion of the ways in which Alastair Minnis has shaped the study of late-medieval devotion and religious controversy.
Thursday 9 May 2024: 15:30
Session 142
Organizers: Robyn A. Bartlett, Purdue Univ. and Michael Van Dussen, McGill Univ.
Moderator: Ann E. Killian, Ohio Dominican Univ.
Cecily Neville and Margaret Beaufort Learning from Birgitta of Sweden
Laura Saetveit Miles, Univ. i Bergen
- This paper will consider how Birgitta of Sweden was perceived in medieval England, as inspired by Minnis’s approach in his chapter “Religious Roles: Public and Private,” in the 2010 Brepols collection, Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition: 1100-1500, and by other pieces from his career.
Lollard Women Liturgists? Lay ‘Conventicles’ and Domestic Rituals
Michael Van Dussen
- This paper presents evidence of women’s participation in rituals and learning or instruction (as well as the representation thereof, often in antagonistic sources) in Wycliffite milieux, in both England and Bohemia. The talk will engage with Alastair Minnis’s influential work on lay (esp. female) preaching and learning, including his “‘Respondet Walterus Bryth…”. Walter Brut in Debate on Women Priests”, “John Wyclif—All Women’s Friend?” and the third chapter of his monograph Fallible Authors, “De impedimento sexus: Women’s bodies and the Prohibition of Priestly Power”, among others.
The Confessions of (Un)holy Women in Medieval Romance
Gina Marie Hurley, Yale Univ.
- This paper examines the narrative of the False Guinevere in the French Arthurian tradition, using it to understand how the sacrament of confession was put to secular uses within in the genre of romance. In this unusual episode, an imposter enters the court to displace the true Queen Guinevere. In the face of her deception, secular justice and trial by battle fail completely to set things right. Kings can be seduced, and trials can be fixed or delayed — or their results can simply be rejected outright. But confessional speech emerges to save the day: the False Guinevere is revealed when she and King Arthur give a series of what they believe will be deathbed confessions. These confessions mean fundamentally different things to the people who offer them. For the False Guinevere, her confession amounts to an unwelcome (to her) stage on which she can finally be seen as and punished for the imposter she is. For Arthur, on the other hand, confession offers an opportunity to reshape a badly damaged reputation. Even as he occupies the role of penitent, the king exerts power over the sacrament, directing the terms of his own confession. Their disparate experiences are shaped by the public nature of this ostensibly private sacrament.