ABSTRACT

John Gower and his contemporaries set the terms of his literary reception in the late fourteenth century. Modern scholarship has produced several important overviews that gather the evidence and map the shape of Gower's reception. Literary testimony comprises nearly all early accounts of Gower's reception and becomes a body of opinion that gains the stamp of authority by repetition. Translation proves an important dimension of Gower's reception. The presentation, transmission, and circulation of Gower's works in manuscript offer primary evidence for analyzing his reception. Sian Echard notes that trilingual Gower becomes an exclusively English writer in early modern print culture. Gower's Cronica Tripertita may have had some local influence on historical. Gower" reception in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period begins, then, in a framework already shaped to some extent by poetic composition and conventions of reading.