ABSTRACT
Compared to the development of feminist criticism on other medieval authors and texts, the scholarship on John Gower and gender has arguably taken somewhat longer to become a major area in Gower studies. As is true of other types of scholarship on Gower, studies on Gower and gender have centered primarily on the Confessio Amantis, rather than on Gower's two other major works, Mirour de l'Omme and Vox Clamantis, or his shorter poems. This chapter reviews feminist scholarship on Gower's Middle English poem and then turns to his two other major works as well as his minor poems. Much of the work done on gender in the Confessio, the chapter suggests, points to some of the new paths that future scholarship can develop about his other works. In the early years of our current century the first two book-length studies of a work by Gower to use gender, queer, and feminist theory as their main methodologies appeared.
