ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an initial sampling of different modes of bringing modern critical theory in conversation with Gower's poetics. One outcome of the increasing prominence of contemporary critical theory in Gower studies is the emergence of teaching-oriented scholarship that uses Gower to extend politically urgent and culturally relevant conversations into the classroom. The chapter discusses major theoretical trends: an initial focus on the role of ethics in the poet's work, a turn to interpretive analysis informed by modern identity-based politics, and an increase in scholarship that explores the author's varied linguistic and socioeconomic milieu. These general developments are not presented as unified schools of thought but rather as hints of the wide range of critical methods that Gower's oeuvre has invited. Gower clearly valued forms of urgent ethical critique that operated hand in hand with careful acts of literary interpretation.
