ABSTRACT
In John Gower's case, noting Aristotelian traditions is essential for taking stock of his work and vocation. Gower does not need to work so hard to convey his intellectual and social authority. Some perspective can be gained simply by noting the obvious gaps and depths in Gower's knowledge, or at least his pattern in deploying it. Gower's trajectory suggests a peculiar mixture of aversion, flagrant but selective immersion, and routine uses of ancient materials to articulate some of his basic assumptions about vernacular authority, literature, and life. It has long been recognized that Gower's social, political, economic, and literary critical ideas were drawn from Aristotelian traditions, whose concepts and methods shaped much late medieval intellectual culture. Gower's political advocacy, a late Lancastrian partisanship responsible for another strand of post-medieval scorn for Gower, can also be partly understood in the perspective of Stoic traditions.
